Nature Is Not Longer Destiny

It is a double video experimental piece, to be screened simultaneously, conceived during a pre-pandemic dance residency in Portugal. The director Jose Spínola induced the characters in a kind of hypnosis to interpret spontaneity -without a previous notion of the script- the concepts dictated as their opposite gender, -women as men and men as women-.

The characters were free to express these concepts at will.

In this way, the director tries to un-mask the gender indoctrinations that society has taught us to play – the ones responsible for creating a void between the genders, which ended up in the extreme sexual polarization we suffer today–. The liberation of men and women from these roles is in process, – music and dance allow us to make an integration of both feminine and masculine hemispheres in ourselves, free from conceptual interpretations, time or space-.

The emergence of a new state is possible, where men are freed from guilt and women from victimhood to achieve an urgent integration of genres beyond biology.

By reversing the roles, I try to decipher and expose the perception of the opposite sex and cultural appropriation in the subconscious of the subject. And therefore, find the connections between the six characters to understand how gender roles are indoctrinated.

Starting with biological factors such as physical strength and mobility as a male advantage and procreation and biological nursing as a female advantage. Scaling towards the roles and feelings given by culture and the set of preconceived signifiers of what it is "to be a man and a woman"; The introduction of the family structure –which occurred only when the man was assigned the role of the father– and the social work of hunting and procreation in the home. It was the emergence of sexual differentiation that ended in today’s extreme sexual polarization.

To claim that women have been oppressed for more than five hundred thousand years is to affirm that all men are oppressive pigs and all women have been herded sheep. –The alcoholic, aggressive and frustrated father frightens his submissive wives and frightened daughters–. Where we were repressed for crying, feeling fear, or being sad for being men and taught not to feel anger or frustration for being women. –Witches are burned for honoring the devil and priests and shamans are honored for praying to the holly, where kings lead the people and queens are the accessories of the nobility of a kingdom–.

We've been playing the role society teaches us to, – all these archetypes, concepts, collective memories, sometimes caricatures, that someone thought would be a masculine/feminine way to be–. Like a disguise, we pretend; I'm masculine, I'm feminine, I'm strong, I'm intelligent, I'm resilient, I'm beautiful… I'm somebody! What does that mean? We can only make sense in terms of our opposite, denying one is denying ourselves.

The evolution and decolonization of gender to liberate BOTH men and women from these roles is in process, at a time when it seems increasingly outdated. Freeing men from guilt and women from victimhood is essential to achieving integration beyond biology.

Music and dance allow us to make this integration within ourselves, where both hemispheres of the brain –feminine and masculine are merged–, mind, body, and spirit can freely flourish where conceptualization doesn’t exist and is suppressed by the power of the now. The emergence of an altogether new state is possible, we are both we are the same.

Nature is no longer destiny, what makes us human is not only our biological advantages but rather what we make out of them outside the indoctrination of the genders.

Nature Is Not longer Destiny (man)

The characters were induced into a type of hypnosis, where they were told that all actions they would do from that moment on would be interpreted by their opposite gender role, in men as women and vice versa.

Nature Is Not longer Destiny (woman)

To achieve a genuine and subconscious interpretation and an honest answer of the dictated concepts; the actors didn’t had extra direction and did not know the script at all.

Just a table where preconceived objects were placed as "male tools" on the left side and "female tools" on the right side. Where the characters were free to improvise as they pleased, with or without objects, the dictated ideas.