the bonds of earthly desires

This portfolio was shot with an infrared camera in Ubud, Bali's capital city, in 2012. The main reason to use an InfraRed camera, a technical trick: see what you can not. Capture what you are not meant to.

It is not a work aimed at highlighting the richness of the Balinese ancient dance tradition nor a way to depict one of the several dances performed in the island.

It is a work about the dancer's role. It is a work about transition.

It could be magic, it could well be hysteria, it could be faith. There is an energy in the act of dancing leading the performers in ways deeper than just physical coordination, training and choreography.

Static movements guide the dancers with captivating hypnosis, all Senses bewitched. The slow pace dance turns into an emotional chaos.

Dancers like puppets through their bodily gestures. No strings to their bodies, no puppeteers above: temporary energy forms in perpetual motion. Until the performers reach a stage, a state of mind where they stop being just humans and become pure vehicles, where each movement of the dance would be lead by the unknown.

As if the dance would open a door allowing the unknown to get in touch with the dancers, to become one with the dancers. Powerful waves of energy pulsate throughout their minds and bodies.

Then the dance becomes the transition between the performers and the otherworldly realm. A way of communicating with what we can't see through what we can feel.

Entranced.
Obscure performance arousing the senses, seducing the imagination.
Stage yet magical arena, where colors, scents, movements and sounds are reconfigured.
Dancers led by passions and longings, bonds of earthly desires.
Tension, intimacy, power.
Sacred essence unraveled: the unseen world of the unknown.
Flashing eyes, flicking wrists, flickering fingers and quivering shadows.
Aesthetic forms yet restless bodies in anxious shapes.
Softness and vigor interweaving as energy, possessed dancers letting "the dance" dance.
Distressed immobility, pulsing silence.
Human perception redefined: dance as transition.
I, human, as vehicle.
I, human, as God.