The young leader of the Spanish new wave takes a caustic but far from humourless look at the objectivisation of women’s bodies on social media. Using a process that leaves nothing to chance and a precise choreographic protocol, Candela Capitán plays deftly with the codes of representation, even if it means destabilising her audience. Five slender dancers writhe in front of a flat screen placed on the floor, their faces lit by their smartphones, to a soundtrack by Slim Soledad. Wearing white high-heeled thigh-length boots, their bodies sheathed in bright pink skin-tight Lycra leotards, they perform a series of suggestive acrobatics and adopt languorous poses referencing striptease. They don’t strip, but their skill takes the risk of blurring the frontier between the real and the virtual, taking us on a journey that is part funny, part voyeuristic. SOLAS acts as an alarm call in response to the commodification of the female body, presenting a mise en abyme of its image and suggesting how to reclaim it in a hyper-connected world. The force of Capitán’s feminist convictions is clear, denouncing as they do the monetisation of the female body, the way it is reduced to an erotic symbol by the world of fashion, and the way its identity is usurped online.
Les représentations à Marseille reçoivent le soutien de l’Institut Ramon Llull
