BODY
The Athena archetype was one of the last to be worked on. Maybe because I did not identify myself with Athena’s energy at first. I started working with this archetype only in December and it was from its movement research that I started associating the archetypes to different parts of the body. For Athena I started from two informations: she was born from the head of Zeus, and her rationality (associated with the brain). I then associated the goddess with the head and began to explore the movements that started from that part of the body.
Athena’s image brings me a great stability, because she is a very centered and strategist archetype. Her movements are thought and organized by her mind and her intellect. So, I thought of her head as the starting point for the distraction of that body and that cause it to become unbalanced. It is as if her strongest point is also her weakest. The head centralizes and ground her, but it also distracts and unbalances her.
The person who identifies with Athena feels a dissociation with her own body, because she is totally in her mind. This dissociation inspired me to look for references of dissociated movements that brought the sensation of pieces.
If you want to read more about Athena’s myth and archetype click here.
“Athena: stability, movement guided by the head destabilizes her, she returns to her stability, it happens again, and again, when the music grows, she finds rectilinear movements and her head continues to want to destabilize her, she is always trying to get back to her stability.” Excerpt from my rehearsal diary of February 1, 2020.
MUSIC AND BODY
In my first meetings with Bobby Locke (the composer), he suggested that I associate the goddesses with Laban’s movement factors so that he could understand how I thought of these goddesses in qualities of movement. I believe that this association helped Bobby in his compositions.
If you want to read more about my association between Laban and Jung click here.
The chart I created:
The first version of a song for Athena reminded me of Demeter and before I tried it on my body with Athena I tested it with the movements I had created for Demeter. In the end it worked perfectly with Demeter so I had solved one issue (I had a song for Demeter), but Bobby ended up with another issue (we still needed a song for Athena).
Athena’s music brings these two elements from the archetype: her rationality and her dissociation (in the case of the archetype the body/mind dissociation).
Bobby and I discussed Athena’s rationality and how it would be linked to clearer music, like neoclassical music.
I believe that the technological element of Bobby’s music helped to create a new layer, which I used as a disruption from the movements of the head to the dissociated movements of the whole body.
VIDEO AND BODY
Director Cybele Washington and I discussed the importance of the head movement in this choreography. I explained to her how I wanted Athena’s imbalance to be evident from the movements of her head. So, we decided to take a close-up shot from the head. However, all my choreographies involve the whole body and the purpose of the videos was to highlight my entire body as well. So, we decided to film the goddess Athena from a side view as well.
If you want to see all the seven videos I have created, click here.
The lateral perspective adds a double dimensionality to the choreography that helps to show and highlight the movements I make backwards. And the head shot shows this connection between Athena and her reason/logic. We also made a third shot only of the feet/legs, in order to have more details and give the dimension of the different dissociated parts of the body.
Curiosity:
On the day of the shooting we filmed each take and then we watched them to see if it was necessary to remake them or not. In the photo: me and Cybele Washington watching Athena’s video.
Here is my video of Athena and write a comment to let me know what you think:
To avoid having to repost the same thing in every post I recommmend reading this post about the context of my research and in what moment I am at.
Gabriela Segato 