What do cavalry and the body of youth have in common? To be as honest as possible, I do not know either, but these are the first three images that come to mind when I listen to Pavane pour une infante défunte by Maurice Ravel. A pavane is a slow dance, associated with a procession of melancholic and ceremonial character, with a weight and slowness that, to me, carry a hidden velocity. The truth I find in this prolonged act of carrying a body tells me that I am trying to delay the burial of youth for as long as possible. Perhaps because I realise I have left things behind, or because I feel I did not live slowly enough through an adolescence that should have been eternal, I now find refuge in the time of the pavane to generate an endless, uncontrollable choreography.
A fleetingness that never decelerates from beginning to end of this procession, thus questioning what the real durability of the absence of pause is, using time at its maximum exponential. Can a body outmanoeuvre itself on the field? Can wild horses and mares gallop backwards as an escape from a destructive future?
Life as the plague and youth as the mountain. And we go to the top of the mountain not to enter it, but to leave ourselves behind, to let the horses and mares run free, towards death or purification. I believe the time has come for us to breathe less and sweat more.
