Ordeal by water is a performative action. Four totems are bounding a specific space. These signs are creating a symbolic area, pre-existing any language, which becomes a support to esoteric practices.
The movements realized by the dancer are extracted from a gestural codes repertoire of various domains, like sports and professional indications. They generate a link between fencing refereeing, safety demonstration of flight attendants, or the indications of ramp service agents in airports.
This proposal questions what is given to see. Here, the moments which precede and succeed the sports performance, become acts of representation. Soccer player’s warm-up, stretching routine the classic dancer, gymnast’s iconic salute in olympics. The pursuit of perfect movement faces the collapse. The inadequacy of the equipment shapes a constraint which defeat this ideal. The dancer, on pointe, wearing cleats and a fencing mask, falls.
