WOMAN

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
Virginia Woolf

The piece is a moving portray of a 16th century woman, a mute poet, trapped in the utopia of finding her true identity. It questions the problematics of power and independence.

Like Virginia and her mind - In a room of her own.

Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own has inspired choreographer and dancer Daniel Proietto in his work with Woman. What if Shakespeare had had a sister who was just as gifted as he was? She would have killed herself, Virginia Woolf suggests, who chose to take her own life 11 years after writing about Shakespeare’s fictive sister Judith. In keeping with the 17th century’s expectations for women, Judith remains an unfulfilled genius, in contrast to her brother William.

In the solo Proietto draws parallels between the story of Judith and Woolf’s own life, with references to Woolf’s upbringing: her brothers received schooling while she felt imprisoned in the home.

In “WOMAN”, Proietto mixes the essay with analogies to Virginia Woolf's own life - referencing her upbringing, her lectures and ultimately her relationship with the "voices" in her mind - portrayed by Kate Pendry recordings of Woolf’s text.

Proietto’s choreographic works are very theatrical and technical. They are as precise as they are raw, always sculpturally elegant and sensual, physically complex and dramatic in its expression. 

Photos by Erik Berg