Lara Martelli: Dance, Choreography, Movement Research

The Gesture of Presence – Body, Stage, Listening

“Il ne s’agit pas de faire. Il s’agit d’être.”
– Ci Chapeu

On stage, it’s not about doing it well.
It’s not even about doing something.
It’s about being.
As Ci Chapeu says: Il s’agit d’être.

But what does it mean to “be” on stage? It’s not a mental state. It’s not a style. It’s the absence of strategy. Then, the stage becomes a space of resonance. The body no longer seeks effect, but allows itself to be touched by what happens. Nothing needs to be corrected: not the tension, not the emptiness, not the discomfort. The trembling is dance. The hesitation is truth. The mistake is already presence. In theatre and dance, we often try to express, to communicate something. But in that effort, the body tightens, the mind takes over, and the life of the gesture disappears. The gesture of presence is not something you “do” – it happens when control dissolves. On stage or in the studio, this becomes something very concrete:Be in the body, not in the head. Don’t think “I need to move like this” – let the form emerge from inner sensation.Feel before acting. Before every movement, there is a pause, a silence: from that silence, real presence is born.Don’t anticipate. In dance, in physical theatre, in subtle gesture: true presence can only arise when you’re not trying to “get somewhere.” Welcome vulnerability. The trembling body, the hesitant voice, the silence before the line – all of it is already performance. It doesn’t need to be fixed; it needs to be inhabited and it will change. Listen with your whole body. To your partner, the space, the light, the rhythm of breath... the gesture of presence is the art of being touched by what’s here, without commentary.

Foto Credits: Daniel Nartschick

I believe that the body does not merely need to be trained. Not only for the body, but through the body. The body is a complex, flexible, fragile and mysterious matter, a reality that challenges certainties. That is why I always try to offer an organic interpretation of movement, in a defining but not definitive form. Depending on what I consider necessary and essential, my teaching is sometimes like training, sometimes like a laboratory. I pursue the idea of the laboratory as a mental and physical training space for the actor and the person. It is important to me that even in the most technical lessons, a dimension of play and a laboratory character is maintained.

The methods and techniques I use for movement studies originate mainly from the field of dance. Dance is much more than an aesthetic and kinesthetic experience in which all the arts merge into a single expression. Dance is based on an original anthropological matrix that is magical and ritualistic and also has a festive dimension. Contemporary dance continues the revolution initiated by modern dance in favour of new forms of physical expression and is fully part of the new contemporary performing arts. Contact improvisation is a constantly evolving form that focuses on the total use of one's own body in relation to space, time and energy experienced in relation to other bodies. I start from an approach to the basic principles of movement in order to provide students ( professional dancers / performers / actors and amateur dance students of al ages ) with a kind of ‘vocabulary’ from which they can draw both in improvisation and in the repetition of choreographic sequences or even their own compositions.

The methods and techniques I use for bodywork come mainly from movement studies of Laban/Bartenieff and bodywork according to the Danis Bois method – perceptive pedagogy or sensory biomechanics. The Danis Bois method of bodywork focuses on perception and presence, Bartenieff emphasises the neuromuscular system, while the Laban method focuses on the movement of the body in dynamic space-time. That is why I think these methods can be well combined. I also draw on my knowledge of other somatic practices and traditional Yoga.