Hello, my name is Selma Trevino.
I would like to open this blog post by thanking Valerie Green for the support and opportunity to present my work at the Take Root program at the Green Space on January 20 and 21st.
Since I was accepted in the program I have been rehearsing at her studio - Green Space - in Long Island City. Besides the wonderful view and big glass windows, the space is sparkling clean and quiet, perfect for exploration and creation. Schedule is respected by other users as well as by the management. Prices are super affordable.
My project consists of 3 choreographies: “Washerwoman” by Etienne Decroux and performed by me; Spring 2020 and Lavadeira Interlude created and performed by me.
The project started from studies of the washerwomen archetype in Brazilian culture, Decroux’s choreography, and the connection of his movements and my Brazilian heritage.
The project was also awarded the Incubator Grant by LEIMAY and after its first showing last fall at the Dixon Place in Manhattan it took its second phase: re-visit my own work.
Spring 2020 is a revival and re-creation of a work from 20 years ago, when I was still studying the Corporeal Mime Technique of Decroux. When the Pandemic became our reality I was invited to show a work online through the Dixon Place program DPTV, which would show feelings of the lockdown which we were facing. I started re-working that choreography, I presented and now I am showing it in person. The big glass windows of the Green Space fitted perfectly to the concept of the choreography and brought even more an aspect of nostalgia and ‘saudades’ of a time that it was.
Lavadeira Interlude, translating “Washerwoman Interlude,” is a transitional choreography between the Washerwoman and Spring 2020 that breaks the solitude that was shown in the first choreography to get in the hard women’s work of the second one.
Etienne Decroux (1898-1991) is considered the Father of the Modern Mime. His technique, Corporeal Mime, was what structured lots of works of contemporary artists, like Marcel Marceau, and also started to bring movement to the actor’s body fertilizing the soil for Physical Theater and research in the field of Theater and Dance. Decroux lived in New York from 1957 to 1962 when went back to live in Paris. The Performing Arts Library by Lincoln Center has lots of files about his work and his work in New York. Even with the word “Mime” in his work title, his work is not pantomime, it brings physical expression before the words, sometimes by the use of stylized gestures and sometimes as abstract movements. I started studying Corporeal Mime while in College, in Brazil, in 1991. I followed my passion going to specialize in the technique in Paris and California, (1996 to 2001) with one of his students, Thomas Leabhart. In 2003 I started my own company, Corporeal Arts Incorporated, with my life partner William Trevino and today I am here telling my story in words and movement.
I hope to share part of this story with you on January 20th and 21st, 2023 at the Green Space!