BY THE THROAT

The title of the choreography was conceived as a tribute to Ben Frost’s album of the same name, which was the starting point of the creative process. But By the Throat is also an image: to be taken by the throat means to find oneself in a state of tension, suspension and vulnerability. This is the physical and emotional sensation that the choreography seeks to evoke in the audience.

The work does not tell a story, but moves through a human landscape in which two different conditions of existence coexist. On one side, a body shaped by technology, conventions and accumulation; on the other, a body that chooses to strip itself of the superfluous in order to rediscover an essential relationship with nature and instinct.

These two dimensions do not represent opposing worlds or defined identities. They are parts of the same human being, forces that observe one another, repel one another, attract one another and ultimately contaminate one another. The clash gradually gives way to curiosity, encounter and mutual transformation, ultimately suggesting that any attempt to classify the other is destined to fail.

The howl of the wolf, present in the musical score, becomes the symbol of an ancestral call. Here, the wolf is not a metaphor for violence, but for a form of belonging, cooperation and instinctive memory that continues to inhabit the human body, despite the distance that contemporary society has created from its own nature.

The costumes initially make this separation visible, but their meaning dissolves as the choreography progresses, allowing a single possible identity to emerge: that of the human being, beyond any label, belonging or difference.

The scene opens on a cold, foggy night. A light, like that of a helicopter on patrol, persistently searches for someone. That presence returns at the end, like a gaze that continues to watch, classify and define. And yet, even as that search persists, the choreography affirms the possibility of escaping imposed categories and of recognising, in the other, a part of oneself.