Silvia Gribaudi: Suspended Chorus

Always expect the unexpected when going to see a Silvia Gribaudi piece. Though I’ve seen many of her works and feel I can spot her artistic fingerprint – perfect comedy timing, and often engaging the audience in conversations or actions – with her new solo, Suspended Chorus, I unexpectedly found myself thinking that she would have been the Bridget Jones we deserved. 

Built in short acts, it begins with her asking the audience to read the synopsis but then invites them to skip the part about her inspirations: Isadora Duncan, Anna Pavlova, Truda Kaschmann, and Pina Bausch. Later, she shares a childhood dream and launches an auction to guess the weight of different body parts. Between these moments, she dances with powerful gestures, pushing herself to exhaustion, asking the audience to cue her choreography, like a maître de ballet: ‘Side, roll, up, turn turn turn turn turn stop!’ Through this structure, she dresses and undresses – emotionally and literally – moving from floating fabrics (Duncan-style) to white tutus (Pavlova-style), to a nude bodysuit and underwear, exposing her body and, perhaps, her insecurities. Bausch echoes in her exaggerated baroque lip-sync; Kaschmann in her grand expressions. 

The dancer is (or rather, seems to be) in the hands of the audience, yet Gribaudi’s comedic approach expertly manipulates us. What seems like a cheeky celebration of a dancer in her 50s becomes a reflection on dreams and on expectations around the weight of a dancing body, and on the weight of expectations on the body itself. You think you’re participating, and instead your gaze is exposed to your own biases, and transformed. Suspended Chorus is a subtle invitation to appreciate and celebrate a dancing body, in the sense of a body that can dance, and the vulnerability it shares builds a chorus of other bodies – ours – to support, with a light gaze, the body of the performer.

In a society that controls bodies, particularly non-conforming ones, Gribaudi is the Bridget Jones we need: without the questionable love interests, and with something far better and maybe radical: love and respect for our bodies and what they hold. With a comedy twist. 

Note: the author had previously worked at OperaEstate, but not at the time of this performance, and all opinions are her own.