Română
I spent this show with my daughter and it was a phenomenal experience. I say I spent because I felt it was a transition, I went from normal to exceptional because I had the opportunity to share the womb with my daughter, to be together in my mother’s womb, to hug and make declarations of love. The show is thought of as a network, a meeting place for senses and emotions. I liked the fact that although I was with the child, so in the role of mother, we gave each other space, and we were independent of each other. She danced trying to imitate the protagonists, I cried when they all lifted one of them. That lifting was a liberation for me, like when I realized that I’m not alone, that I have the support of a group, as often “your” people hold you on their shoulders, even if it hurts. It’s a performance that gives the viewer freedom of movement, and that seems to me very important in a dance performance, to be able to feel your body and its limits.
Iuliana D
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Thank you for this show, which was a unique experience for me! I liked the idea of the installation and the fact that I had access to several areas, each with its vibe and meaning. The protagonists had different personalities and different styles of presenting themselves in front of the audience and with all that (or maybe because of that :), they generated a very coherent and well-knit story.
I found myself in many of the poses there, I saw myself in the relationship with my young children once, with my grown children now, but also with myself as a woman-child.
It was cool that we could move around the space and especially the final moment when we had our performance. I felt the need during the show to get involved, to dance with them, so the tickets at the end were welcome. A very strong feeling throughout the performance was that of something very intimate and personal, even though there were so many people there!
Ana-Maria C
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I think I can say here that I am grateful to you because I felt in a safe environment and went deep enough to learn lessons about my relationship with my mother. It was as if I could translate some of the emotions of a mother or my mother, I created more empathy for them and for her and automatically a greater closeness. I feel that the experience has also brought me a lightness of what it means to be a mother and confirmation that perfection is not required in this role.
Cami T
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For me, this whole project was very personal from the very beginning, primarily because motherhood is a topic that interests me and that I write about. So I let this project live in me in many ways. Before going to the final moving [m]others performance, I went to one of the workshops organized by Valentina at Areal. I participated together with my mother, who in the meantime died and – the fact that we danced together in this project acquired very important valences after her death, it was healing, like a parting ritual.
The final performance impressed me in many ways, from the way it was thought of as an experience where all the senses were involved, to the freedom you were given as a spectator to sit anywhere and do whatever you wanted. It is very pleasant, relaxing or necessary to be able to position yourself anywhere in the mommy adventure. The dance/dances had a cathartic effect on me. I saw there the difficulties I had as a mother, the joy, the tenderness, the sadness and above all the crazy transition from one state to another and from one emotion to another. In a subtle but very deep way, I think this project helped me to understand myself better as both mother and daughter and to heal what needed to be healed. I completed this healing by spending a few minutes at the end of the performance in the huge womb where I told myself everything I think I needed to be told when I was in my mother’s womb.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart to the entire team that managed to capture the surrounding maternal energies and give them a healing and liberating form.
Rucsandra P
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For me, moving [m]others was about being led by a mother to the experience of this participatory performance. moving [m]others began with a tactile exploration that made me reflect on my childhood in 1990 versus my daughter’s, which is happening now, on information then versus now, how things like breastfeeding and how flies configure you as an individual. Once in the performance space, the invitation to sit wherever I wanted and the fact that I could move to try other perspectives, gave me the opportunity to see everything in 3D and go to those details that attracted me and moved something in me. From daughter rebellion to the tensions, challenges, and crazy feelings we don’t normally express as mothers, to the anger and tenderness we experience in close relationships as mothers, daughters, and birthing partners, moving [m]others was a visceral experience of meeting oneself, of being accompanied in the experience of being a mother and of feeling the universality of feelings in the journey of being a mother. There would be something else that was very moving for me: there was a moment when Alexandra was lifted on the hall wall by the other mothers, and Silvia nestled against Valentina’s chest, while Valentina held her in her arms. For me, it was a very powerful moment, which stayed with me, that I thought about how I, as an adult daughter of my mother, still nestle on her chest and am still held by my mother in her arms like a small child.
Teodora B,
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Moving [m]others is a collective performance that brings to the viewer personal stories about motherhood, told to move, to evoke early memory and to tame the way we look at motherhood. The scenography is built around the maternal universe: food and clay through which the senses are awakened; drawings – as a space for play and expression; the womb – as a place of reflection and transposition in time; the stage open to the viewer, where there are no physical barriers between the spectators and the performers, just as the mother remains, very often, without personal space.
The built space helped me to relive sensations from my childhood, to be curious to explore body memory and to accept more easily that motherhood is a road that only goes forward. Many times we seek to find out what we were like as children and we want to understand the maternal connection, without imagining that these answers are in our bodies. We forget that “The first experiences with the world are concrete” (Bernard Aucouturier, quotes used in the exercise on the senses), which helps us to keep in the body the early memories that form us as adults and that the brain is not yet ready to register.
The performance is emotional by mixing the child’s gestures with the mother’s experiences. The moving [m]others universe is created from the memory of birth, desperate hugs, grimaces, obsessively repeated lines, outbursts, ecstasy, stretching to the maximum and above all the support of “others”.
In this performative form, where the viewer is inside the scenography, witnessing the inner tensions, moving [m]others becomes a space of freedom, where the body is invited to open up, explore and communicate with other bodies.
Laura B
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A friendly start that invites and introduces you to the world of the senses and beyond. The short walk with Valentina brings, in addition to a smile on your face, a quick body awareness that connects you with your own body but also with the idea of motherhood, child, and physicalities addressed in [m]others – Valentina talks, for example, about “strange” movements with legs, we also tried them quickly before, we had fun, about facial expressions, about “no make-up”, about connecting with other bodies with childlike curiosity. I especially discover this in the first duet of Alexandra and Mădălina, which I observe very closely. A kind of touching, of working with the body of the other, fluid and different where the soles touch the face, the toes are put in the mouth, and the private parts are also there, “treated” like any other part of the body, touched without meaning, simply from the flow of the movements. etc., like children who move together without the landmarks of social “norms”. A lot is going on in the space and it’s hard for me to catch everything and invest the same attention, so most of the time I choose. The moment that moved me is the one where all the girls and women tie and untie, support each other, pull and push each other. It made me think of mothers, my mother, hardships and struggle, what it means to be a woman and a mother and how they do everything humanly possible to hold everything together, to make things move, no matter how difficult it is. In terms of emotional intensity, the group moment was the strongest. Interesting movement vocabulary than in solos/duets etc. Everything that made me think of children, of bodies that do not obey rules or learned techniques. I remember the moment of Alexandra’s movement+text in which the way she delivered the text also took me to some delicious gnome children. I liked that the performance ended with the opening to the audience again. It rounded out the viewer’s experience. People need play and contexts in which to express themselves. I know you, I know who is mother, I know who is not, I know who is daughter, etc. and I also looked through this filter. For example, when I was watching Alexandra solo, I had the feeling that I was seeing Indie, when Valentina took Silvia in her arms, I burst into tears because I saw the mother-daughter relationship there. And because I recently met Maia, Diana’s daughter, I looked for her through space and missed her :)). However, I caught sight of another little girl who danced non-stop, in a corner, on pillows. This seems cool to me, with children present, maybe without, the way the performative space is set up invites a relaxed presence, a change of place and choices. Because I chose, I also lost :)), for example, although I had received a map at the beginning and explanations, I missed the uterus area, and if it wasn’t for Madalina to tell me at the end when people were already messing around, they were dancing and were drawing, I wouldn’t have entered Loredana. Oh, and the plasticine from the beginning! I fell in love with it. And the music actually moved me from halfway through especially.
Mihaela D.
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It seemed to me an extremely faithful representation of the ‘mommy’, an integration of the senses, the emotions that we certainly all felt on our skin. This time, it was as if I participated in my show. I was stuck in some moments, especially the one with the ‘human chain’ that took me far behind, I laughed, I cried, I got scared, and I freaked out… If I were to approach it pragmatically, I think that justice was done to the mother. 🙂 The child liked the fruit and the tongue out.
Oana
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The show moving [m]others is a powerful and complex show, with a special and direct bodily approach to a theme that is always present in our social and personal life and that always involves a body, a different story and a lot of emotion. These are exhibited on stage by the artists involved simply and organically, with a lot of physical strength and expressiveness and emotion. Another plus of this show is the arrangement of the audience in the performative space, somewhat random – that is, it is not arranged in a certain way, thus creating a performative installation in which the audience is also a part, being assimilated inside the show in a discreet and fine. The show is a strong and pleasant sensory experience, through the presence of the artists and the other elements such as the approach to the disposition of the audience, the sound background which is live electronic music and follows very organically what is happening on the stage, the lights which create a special general atmosphere.
Cătălina G
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Your installation stayed with me and in me. I was very impressed by how you staged the deeply organic and so personal way in which motherhood is lived and how it continuously unfolds like a fractal! How the same movements, made by different people, conveyed different messages, and how sometimes very different movements conveyed similar feelings. I thought at one point that I would love to be part of your installation 🙂 but I don’t know if I could ever be as brave as you. Thanks again!
Monica A
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An Indie Box project. Cultural project co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.
