Presenter Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts series brings boundary breaking choreographer Silvana Cardell brings Disposable Bodies for its debut at the Wilma Theater October 6-8. This visually striking multi-disciplinary dance work from Argentinean-born and Philadelphia-based choreographer Silvana Cardell—and with dramaturgy by Wilma founder Blanka Zizka— spotlights and usurps the hierarchical relationships of human and animal bodies with intricate and high energy movement, giant video projections and a score by renowned sound artist Maria Chavez.
“The core question I aim to address through the creation of Disposable Bodies revolves around categorizing protected versus abandoned lives,” says Cardell. “At the heart of this exploration lies the significance of human and non-human bodies and the role of dance embodying these ideas.”
In Disposable Bodies, six striking dancers navigate a series of episodic installations, capturing the shared vulnerability and likeness of all species through immense artistry. At turns violent and peaceful, harmonious and destructive, the powerful, precise, interlocking movement is by complimented by vast projections and evocative installations that performers deftly unravel—a grass knoll, a giant pig, a wall of water, a reflective floor that evolves from meditative openness to caged silence. Questioning the categorization of protected versus abandoned lives, Cardell upends anthropocentric narratives, illuminating an urgent conversation about new relationships to other species in the world we inhabit. Disposable Bodies proposes a new relationship to the natural world addressing the other, the most vulnerable, the forgotten.
[Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts presents Cardell Dance Theater at the Wilma Theater, 265 S Broad St] October 6-8, 2023; wilmatheater.org; cardelldancetheater.com