Jérôme Delatour
Images de Danse
Paris
2008

"In-organic". Of course, and the hyphen ensures it, that's not a question of inorganic here. As there is nothing mineral there. It's a matter of what is organic inside, I would say visceral.

Marcela Levi, this frail naked little woman, hardly higher on her almost needle high heels, produces solo miniatures, small gems of precision. Always with the same four colors: white, red, black, skin. There is little doubt that Marcela Levi is not an easy going girl. She skillfully weaves and undoes the symbols. A pearls necklaces net suddenly unrolled becomes a thread, like a seminal jet; then wraps in corset and goes down in curves of a caress to enclose her ankles like a lasso that ropes a cow. Hairpins can also freeze a mouth.

What is visceral in Marcela Levi is undoubtedly her male energy, the desire of this energy to combine female mental strength and male physical strength. She loves to face the audience she looks at (or covers) with a placid assurance. As a symbol of her desire and strength, a bull's head she carries with her own arms like a trophy, or against her hips in vigorous coming and going for better possessing it meanwhile she possesses the others. Naked or suddenly redressed - as domesticated -, heifer and bull, dominating and dominated, herself a trophy when her profile freezes, opened mouth, she accepts and faces fatalities of her species, violent and ancestral. For she also tells us stories. The story of macho cowherds at the aside village, or something like that; with a beautiful Brazilian voice so caressing, like a balsam on the hardness of her country. Also the story of a photojournalist who makes his career on the world's misery. "It is like that, he likes it, she likes it. Yeah!" This dreamer leitmotiv, repeated with a small smile, clever and satisfied, almost greedy, alternates with a noisy sabbath refrain, obsessionaly obscene by its mechanics.

The exact object of the demonstration escapes us, but we understand immediately what about Marcela speaks. Taking advantage of her body's sensuality for better subverting the macho representations, she uses a traditional process of feminist performance. However, her feminism is a today's one; that's no longer a question of only introducing the man as an executioner and the woman as a victim. Between domination and seduction, rebellion and acceptance, Marcela Levi sows disorder and produces, as a result, without any doubt, the most erotic performance of Les Inaccoutumés.

♥♥♥♥♥♥ In-organic, by Marcela Levi, was given at the Ménagerie de Verre November 25 to 27, 2008 as part of the Les Inaccoutumés Festival.