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Serpentry

  • Catia Silvestre

My first conceptual and performance project - I am currently working on developing this idea. Serpentry tells the story of a woman, mother and daughter and her transformation through life's anguishes and deceptions, their true nature hidden from them. Fera felt different all her life, she felt this force inside her calling her to run as fast as the wind and venture in to the unknown. She loved dancing and loosing herself to music, from young she dreamt of becoming a ballerina, this dream was never allowed, instead she was made to live a life of restraint, silence and control, she was seen as too fragile and pure. Ultimately, this life as a porcelain doll was ruined by a man and by her becoming a mother much to shame and rejection of her family. With the shame, pain and rejection and through the discovery of a wilder version of herself, Fera discovers her true nature and through dance she is fully transformed and finally free. Her daughter, afflicted by a similar destiny struggles to find herself through the pain and loss of being left alone in such a cruel world, she fights the anger and tries to hold on to the memories she has from her mother but she too is starting to transform into a truer version, just like her mother, she finds herself free from her humanity and accepted by her natural form as a the daughter of the snake.

Ecdysis
I think of her, often,
alone,
my heart still too raw,
open.
There are too many mirrors in this house,
I avoid them all.
I cannot stand to see her in my own reflection,
grey, like winter.
I find fragments of her in words,
and stories are my inheritance.
She left me nothing,
she left, me.
Saudade.
I drag my heavy body
along the path we used to walk,
together.
I slither away into the hollow at the base of the old bay tree,
My skin has started to shed, I fight it,
I want to keep this skin,
she touched this skin.
No, I won’t let go.
But my body betrays me,
already overgrown,
I force myself to fit in but I am rejected.
I think of her in this last moments before I lose her completely,
she who told me secrets,
which I still keep.
She did not have to pretend,
to be tamed.
She kept herself away from the bright lights,
like a moonflower,
sweet and sour.
From her death there is my rebirth.
From her I learned to thrive in darkness.
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