Loïe Fuller (1862-1928) was a performance artist before the same term even existed: ingenious and impossible to categorize. She became known through her solos where she would spin in circles, leaving meters of silk cloth around her body. She fits in the art nouveau movement, but also had fun dancing at home, at Folies Bergère room in Paris. By being the first person to make use of electrical light and positioning movement outside of the body, she was a force to be reckoned with in the world of dance and theatre. She collaborated with people such as Auguste Rodin and the Lumière Brothers.
In “Bombyx Mori”, a play for three female performers, Ola Maciejewska takes inspiration from the “Serpentine Dance” from Fuller. Ola explores the relationship between human beings and physical matter in art, creating movement in sizable pieces of cloth. Waterfalls of black clothing wave throughout the stage, creating short-lived whirlpools, wings and mythical creatures that parade exuberantly before our eyes. She plays with the intersection of bodies and objects and the battle these employ. “Bombyx Mori” alludes to the silkworm that has become completely dependent on humans to survive.
Here the natural body and the artificial process are inex- tricably linked: a pungent metaphor for a sculptural interpretation, exploring the relation between body and artifact in a delirious way of constant vertigo, where the true hybrid nature of things is revealed.
