Outline
The documentary film "Illness Reaches Its Crisis in a Dissolving Sweat" focuses on women ageing through dance. A cinematic journey celebrating the enduring power of femininity and resilience embodied by the Argentinian dance choreographer Florencia Guerberof.
Her work creatively explores life's profundity and the timeless legacy of womanhood through the language of Japanese Butoh dance.
Synopsis
In the summer of 2022 I created a new performance. I contracted Covid in the process. I spent seven days feeling extremely weak and drained but I continue moving. Through angst and nausea, I danced an imaginary purge in a soundscape of life force pulsations.
During the making of the work I was confronted with a state of crisis, being caught up in-between the desire to move and not being able to. By the last rehearsal, my energy was fully restored through a liberating and cathartic sweat.
This creative documentary explores choreographer Florencia Guerberof’s interpretation of Butoh dance. Her dance scores are hypnotic, inducing specific states of mind that manifest through the body.
The founder of butoh was Tatsumi Hijikata, an eccentric visionary of post-war Japan, a daring dancer and choreographer who subverted traditional dance forms. He envisioned dancers’ bodies as real and inseparable from life, yearning to remain childlike, dancing wildly in places closest to gods.
In his works, naked bodies reveal brutal honesty and extreme physicality, delving into darkness and reaching the unknown with unprecedented beauty. Hijikata’s creations envelop the viewer in a world of eroticism, derangement, possession, and transformation, drawing from rural Japan’s folk narratives to Tokyo’s cabaret underworld.
We are delighted to introduce our film to Amsterdam Film Festival IDFA Docs for Sale. To book a screening preview and meeting please get in contact with Maria at: mariaguerberof@gmail.com
www.guerberof.com