Bitter Pineapples
(Piñas amargas)
This work is the result of an intensive collaboration between myself and artist and filmmaker Anna Cady. Together we have endeavoured to convey the role dance has played for me in coming to terms with trauma. Below is a short clip of the film, to watch it in its entirety please get in touch and I will give you access.
I feel this film is best watched in the nurturing company of others. After watching it you may feel the need to dance or walk in nature. Choose something that makes you feel good.
About the film
This work is the result of an intensive collaboration between Gabriel and artist and filmmaker Anna Cady. Together they have endeavoured to convey the role dance has played for Gabriel in coming to terms with trauma.
In the first section of the film, Gabriel’s Dance, Gabriel tries to make sense of his memories. He (and his shadow) dance in front of a projection of stills and ‘found’ video footage – of himself, dancing in his aunt’s house in Mexico some years ago. The narration wanders through memories, which are at times of a normal happy childhood but increasingly reveal a world of violence and death…
This year, Anita, Gabriel’s mother, spent three months with him in the UK where the second part of this film Anita’s Dance was shot – in his home in Southampton. It is about silence. The silence which protects them from facing up to discussing the violence and abuse they have experienced and the freedom dance gives them to overcome fear.
Anna: ‘Over the past years I have commissioned Gabriel to dance in relation to my film installations and this is the first in a series of collaborative experiments in film and dance which are led by Gabriel’s life experience. It has been important to us that we made a film about the repercussions of violence and the abuse of power, whilst revealing the therapeutic value of both film and dance.
Roland Barthes spoke of the need to describe interiority without disclosing privacy. I’m not sure we have achieved that, but it has been a guiding principle in making the work.’
Anna Cady has screened and installed films both nationally and internationally – including Tate Modern. Her animated documentary 30% (Women and Politics in Sierra Leone) won Best Film award at Southampton Film Week and went on to be selected for the Sundance Film Festival in 2013, and a Vimeo ‘Staff Pick’. Installations of her work include Mottisfont (NT), and more recently at Tremenheere Sculpture Park within the James Turrell Skyspace.
I’d be very grateful if you could fill out this brief feedback form after watching the film, a big thank you in advance.
Words that come to mind when I describe my feelings for Mexico
‘My land / my house / my grandmother / her food / myself waiting for her / my brother – recriminations / my homosexuality / a river of blood…’
Gabriel Galvez-Prado
The film’s impact
-
It brought up a feeling in my body that reminded me of my own journey as a woman coming to terms with the sexual oppression and power abuse running through my ancestral lineage.
It also triggered me to remember the years I grew up as a child, where silence, shame and blame surrounded my family home life around sexuality, whereby the time I was a teenager, I was in constant fear of sexual violence, yet I never experienced anything explicitly myself within the home.
A sexologist who saw me for some sessions told me she felt there was intergenerational sexual trauma that I was carrying. I felt a heavy loud silence, a deep sadness, and an unspoken weight on my shoulders.
Gabriel's film brought up a difficult feeling in me. It reminded me of how hard it is to break through taboos and try to transform traumatic experiences within families, or within a societal structure that has fixed itself so tightly that no one feels strong enough to challenge it.
In his film, he is seen with his mother, dancing together, which touched me deeply. Before that, you see them in a scene where his mother and he are pictured, sitting still, silently for what seemed like forever. She was not sure whether to speak out. Finally, you see them, moving together in a dance, that seemed to break through the silence. Their bodies spoke freely, even though there were no verbal words alongside it.
I felt hopeful for his situation, that he was processing and transforming his trauma and his relationship with his mother. At the same time I felt a little hopeless that I might never be able to do the same thing with my own situation.
The relief came in speaking further individually with Gabriel and one to one with others who shared a similar lineage as me. To speak openly, to cry, to receive healing bodywork, to move and dance it out, helped me to break through that hopelessness. There may always be pain bubbling underneath the surface, but when it is expressed with others who listen, it can transform into a kind of music; a kind of dance.
It is a brave act of Gabriel to begin to openly process and transform his trauma through art. I believe that it is a process that can be impactful because art itself is a healing form that invites people in; wherever they are at; to contribute and participate; in whatever capacity they have in each moment.”
Anonymous