Javier Pérez’s En Puntas is a striking visual performance that examines the links between disparate behaviors. It features French ballerina Amélie Segarra, who dances with knives attached to the traditional pointe shoes worn by ballerinas. In an empty theater, the ballerina jauntily pirouettes on a baby grand piano, her pointe moves accentuated by the daggers on her feet.
Watch a ballerina pirouette on a pair of daggers
As Segerra stumbles, screams, and struggles to keep balance, Pérez spins the camera around her, evoking the memory of a child’s music box. Pérez uses metaphor to “reveal the weaknesses that become the boundaries between seemingly irreconcilable concepts such s beauty and cruelty, fragility and violence, culture and nature, or life and death.” Extracts from the intense performance are included below; the entire show is not yet available.
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