2024 ~ Meditations#13.4 ~ Giulia Crispiani
DAI invited guest writers Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa, Harun Morrison, and Giulia Crispiani to meditate on specific parts of COOP SUMMIT 2024 which took place in Essaouira in Morocco on September 5, 6, 7, 2025. Five COOP study groups forged their collaborative research into an assemblage of public happenings.
Giulia Crispiani distilled what she witnessed at COOP study group Choreopoethics: undisciplined corporeal publishing and choreographic planning's presentation Meta/Mega TRANS - Modes of Narration
Archive – COOP study group Choreopoethics: undisciplined corporeal publishing and choreographic planning presents Meta/Mega TRANS - Modes of Narration on September 7, 20:30 at Dar Souiri – Association Essaouira Mogador.
As soon as we enter the space, there is a strong sense of smell. At the entrance we are greeted by a hand-washing ritual with scented water. A soundscape is playing. We go upstairs and carpets are laid everywhere. We are handed out a bookmark, also heavily scented. We hear seagulls. We look at the stage from above. Downstairs the floor is marked with tape, a body slowly moves around, spinning, and there are large cardboard sheets piled up offstage. Upstairs people come in slowly. We hear the sound of the sea, people chatters, and a soundscape.
[Can we separate our senses?
Scent on fingers
I’m touched]
Lights go off, the soundscape changes, it becomes more musical, while two voices recite.
[Sand salt water wind
Scattering stories,
each tale an opening,
grounded in past events.
Two levels: House as
vertical being,
House as
observer.
Who’s the dancer]
The reading offers a translation into Darija. The dancer still spins around. Lights go on again.
Act ONE – Water is announced. A few people carry in the cardboard sheets and arrange it over the markings on the floor. Two voices read.
[Can a body not be political even without knowing?
Archive of tracelessness—movement instructions
People don’t speak to their bodies]
Meanwhile the cardboard arrangements continue, the dancer spins faster and around.
[History is a spiral spiralling in the shape of a constant world.]
People walk around the cardboard arrangement and continue to fix it, while a voice reads in Arabic.
Act TWO – Sand is announced. Three leather sheet are brought in and laid on cardboard, along with some large bowls full of sand. Three people start to draw sand spirals with their hands. Some other people lay behind what have become cardboard walls.
[The communal appears—
Sometimes I feel buried
in the sand like a scorpion.]
Move that way please—the voice instructs the dancer.
[The present a dangerous place.
Our house is our corner
of the world.
We must find the words.]
The dancer spirals, house lamps come in.
Act Three – Cardboard is announced. Black markers are distributed among the people on stage, who start writing on the cardboard walls.
[We’re being walled in.
Secrecy—silence speak louder than words.
Read the room, read our home.]
The dancer keeps on spiraling.
[If I stand, I stand still
Writing on walls
Haunted, walled-in
Dancer spiralling history.]
[The house protects the dreamer,
the house allows someone to dream in peace.] These lines will follow me for a while.
Act 4 – Salt is announced. A performer comes in and looks at us upstairs, then sits down to look at themselves on the mirror and do their make up.
[Anger is a luxury,
in prays of the people
dancing with guns and swords.
The word habit is too worn.]
The dancer walks slowly in a corner, the person in the middle is fixing their air and lipstick, music goes on louder, the performer is posing and smiling.
[Sailing in the wind without wind—
each tale is an opening, grounded
in past events where these tales were born.]
A strong smell (of what I wonder?) invades the room. The person in the middle of what is the stage, lip syncs a song and everyone who’s in the house begins to dance slowly. Then people from the audience join them joyfully—there’s a strong feeling of ending. For a while, I will remember them dancing.
About the author: Giulia Crispiani
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