SHORT BIO
Nahelli Chavoya is a PhD candidate at the University of Limerick, Ireland. She is a dancer, poet, and dance researcher from Mexico. All of Nahelli’s artistic practices, as well as her academic career, have always been entwined. Her research addresses the relationship between poetry, nature, and the experience of the dancer, focusing on her own experience as an Irish step dance practitioner and poetry writer. She is interested in investigating the relationship between her practices, and in exploring poetry as an experiential approach through dance.
PROPOSED WORK
In this residency, Nahelli will be working on an artistic work informed by her most recent art installation presented as part of her PhD. In this project, she researches poetry as an approach to reality and claims that dance can be assumed as poetry in that sense. In this research, she has noticed how her long walks in the forest and her dance-as-poetry practice are closely related. She will be exploring this relationship further.
Studio 11
Dates: Sep 4-Oct 2
Still Dance: BKN Version
(Recreating one of my previous art installations using materials found in Björkö)
Granite Dreams Installation
(Presented at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick)
A voice
is the wind
the voice
of the trees
or are the trees
mumbles
of the wind
or has a memory
of the sea
got tangled
among
the tree branches
is my voice
uttered
with the same air
that shapes
the sea waves
do we speak
about
the same things
do we speak
the same voice
do we
speak
the same
voice
you
and
I
you and I
Granite Dreams is an audiovisual installation created for a PhD research project that delves into the poetry of movement. The installation explores the rhythms present in two distinct locations: Björkö, Sweden, and the Slieve Blooms Mountains in Ireland.
The creative process involved site-specific movement-writing practices, experimental walks, and conversations between the artists. The installation contemplates the different rhythms present in the environment, such as the ones found in the sea, the rocks, and within the body. This installation particularly reflects on the merging of differences through rhythm.
The soundscape, created by William Troy, is a sonic reflection of the rhythms of the locations interwoven with three poems that Nahelli Chavoya wrote during her observations and engagements with the environment.
I followed a map
the sea waves
on rock skin
and tendrils of quartz
to find my way back
not to where I was born
nor where I have been
but when I was rock
and dreamed granite dreams
Directed by: Nahelli Chavoya
Videography: Nahelli Chavoya & William Troy
Editing: Nahelli Chavoya
Soundscape Composition: William Troy
Poems: Nahelli Chavoya
PhD supervisors: Dr. Orfhlaith Ni Bhriain, Dr. Óscar Mascareñas
Technical Team: Dr Alan Dormer and Juhani Konttinen
Video Documentation & Editing: Lucy Dawson
Acknowledments: Irish World Academy of Music and Dance
BKN Björkö Konstnod Residency
