In Performance: Catol Teixeira – la peau entre les doigts at Santarcangelo dei Teatri

Catol Teixeira: la peau entre les doigts
Santarcangelo dei Teatri

Catol Teixeira is a Geneva-based performer and choreographer from Brazil. Their practice enacts the concept of dance as a collective manifestation and uses improvisation to ask the audience ‘what does it mean to move’ and ask themselves ‘what does it mean to inhabit this body?’ 

Their piece ‘la peau entre les doigts’ is a beautiful convergence of bodies, queerness, space, and time and lives in the interstitial spaces between the present and memories from our past. The piece contains several parts: ‘the welcoming, a vertiginous preparation, the crossing, celebration, sound of a memory.’

We walk into a school gymnasium where we are greeted by Teixeira.  They welcome a number of audience members by engaging them in a few moments of sustained eye contact either from a seated, standing, or prostrate position. These encounters are simultaneously playful, welcoming, and questioning. 

Next, we enter the moment of preparation. They twist their body as if controlled by some unseen centrifugal force, creating a dizzying effect mirrored by the whirring soundscape and red lights that accompany them. They begin a series of repetitive head-banging motions that guide them through the audience–a sea of bodies both standing and sitting. What is most striking about this piece is its ability to create community through nonverbal communication. As Teixeira weaves through the crowd, the audience collectively moves and makes way for them to continue their piece. We make space for their body to move through our collective bodies–we affect the way in which Teixeira performs both by the play space we create and by the energy we give them through sustained eye contact throughout the performance. 

After the tumult and dizzying contortions they enact comes the release of unbridled joy. They race through the crowd and once again connect with individuals in the audience and dance as if it’s 2 am in the club and we have not a care in the world. 

I’m left with the convergence of many emotions we feel as queer people: the robotic social mimicry we attempt for our own safety, the mourning of a ‘life that could have been’, and the feeling of elation when we are in a safe space and allowed to feel wholly ourselves.

Catol Teixeira : la peau entre les doigts
Santarcangelo dei Teatri

July 8 20.00
July 9 22.30
July 10 19.00

ITC Molari 
via Orsini, 19
Tickets

Photo: ©Julie-Folly