La Mère

Dans le dénuement que traverse la russie, les accents mystiques de Scriabine accompagnent la douleur d’une mère orpheline de ses enfants.Cette danse gestuelle se déroule sur une unique diagonale symbolisant le parcours de vie.

This solo is part of a dance ensemble, Impressions de Russie, on three studies by Scriabin. Isadora Duncan arrived in Moscow a few months earlier to found a dance school. In the penury then affecting the whole of Russia, Scriabin’s mystical tones accompany the pain of a mother orphaned from her children.

This gestural dance takes place on a single diagonal symbolising the course of life. A woman bends over, like a child that she seems to pull out from the earth. The phrasing of the gestures sculptures the space between the child evoked and the mother. The dialogue and their imaginary body to body encounter are enveloped in an earthly sluggishness fuelled by the ternary circle of the music. “True dance is the strength of pain” writes Duncan. The child wanders off, she follows it with her gaze, it comes back, she embraces it fervently and lays it down in front of her. But her fingers, in a last caress, find only the ground. Still on the ground, the mother stretches her body to the distance in an ultimate gesture of farewell, of adieu.

Source Dictionnaire de la Danse (CCN – Ballet de Lorraine 2004 – 2005)