Solo, first performed at the Centre national de la danse in Paris,
open studio, May 2001
20 minutes
« In fact, I didn’t want to write, about this.
I wanted to dance it, in my dance language, look inside the fiber of gesture, dress myself in a bodily state in order to bear witness : testify for the women I met at the prison in Loos-les-Lille, like so many other women elsewhere, to the light that goes out in their eyes, and their skin that becomes grayer from one day to the next, to the humiliating work they are offered, the regard of those around them that treats them like children, to the negation of their sexuality.
And then, other women’s prisons can resonnate here, the roles of women, the enclosure of certain relationships.
The photographs by Béatrice Joly testify as well, as does the scenographic universe of Benoît Petit.
I offer this dance to these women.
In spite of the comfort of a dance studio, or the so relative discomfort of unveiling oneself in front of one’s pairs, that a dance may aspire to such motivations by its delicate and modest means, or not, my revolt is no less. »
Priscilla Newell
“Here, we only take small steps…
Here, you have to swallow your modesty and hold on to your intimacy deep inside yourself… »
an inmate, Loos-les-Lille
“….. imprisonment, solitude, promiscuity, watching eyes incessantly laid on you, the loss of intimacy, this is what Priscilla Newell shows us with fluid, sometimes violent, sometimes tense mouvements. Her sensitive indignation, one which aims for the dignity of the human subject, underlies her work. »
Alain Gasté, journalist and psychiatre
Photographs by Béatrice Joly, all rights reserved
