pan y cebolla is a videowork for choreographed camera, which I created with the Mexican choreographer Montserrat Payro and the artist Ramona Poenaru.
The work was inspired by the Spanish proverb ‘Contigo, pan y cebolla’ (With you, bread and onions) which is equivalent with the German expression ‘von Luft und Liebe leben’ or French ‘vivre d’amour et d’eau fraîche’. The passionate undercurrents of this popular saying were the starting point for the collaboration between choreographer Montserrat Payro and myself. We were ‘peeling the onion’ to the point of tears, abandoned the many skins of memory, in search for the axioms of unconditional love. The work negotiated distances and proximities between bodies. The dichotomy between emptiness and hunger, the dilemmas emerging between language, body and desires came into focus. The theme for the video work – cannibalism – arose from in the midst of the flesh, radically desiring the flesh of the other, to the point of assimilation. Fleshly incorporation of unbound desire. We dreamt the cannibalistic fantasy of two women in solidarity. Death, food, aggression, sacrifice, love, and destruction revolved around the pivot of transformation. The work dealt with the human other and her otherness.
Collaboration on Video with Ramona Poenaru, Tim Darbyshire and Pavlos Kountouriotis. Excerpts of this work in progress were presented on September 21 at the Institute de Mexique in Paris & in Guadalajara, Mexico in the framework of Encuentro Internacional Nuevos Creadores a Escena, October 7–28, 2007. The video work was presented at various dance film festivals. This project was initiated by Sweet and Tender Collaborations/Skite, with the generous support of PAF and Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary and National Fund for the Arts
Mariella Greil 