Elizabeth Sarah Coles, Jordi Doce and Odalipo x Emma Villavecchia
On Anne Carson's "A Lecture on Pronouns"
Debate
Literary critic Elizabeth Sarah Coles reads the experimental lecture "Possessive Used as Drink (Me): A Lecture on Pronouns in the Form of Fifteen Sonnets" by the celebrated poet and classicist Anne Carson, with dance accompaniment from the Odalipo collective in collaboration with dancer Emma Villavecchia. The lecture will be followed by a conversation between the performers and poet and translator Jordi Doce.
What’s in a pronoun? What is the power of he, she, you and we to make or break our relationships, from the intimately precarious to the public and openly political? How to talk about this power while keeping its contracts open? This first European performance of Anne Carson’s “Lecture on Pronouns” features a reading by the literary critic and scholar Elizabeth Sarah Coles, accompanied by improvised choreography from the Barcelona-based dance collective, Odalipo, in a new collaboration with dancer, Emma Villavecchia. The poet, Jordi Doce –whose new translation of Carson’s lecture accompanies the reading in English– will join Coles and the other performers in a conversation exploring the soft power of pronouns and the new avant-gardes in para-academic literature, performance, and dance.
The event takes place in the framework of Performing the Lecture, a cycle of experimental dialogues and performances exploring the creative possibilities of the lecture form. The cycle is directed by Elizabeth Sarah Coles, Amador Vega and Sergi Castellà (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), and is financed by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 887344.
Participants: Elizabeth Sarah Coles, Jordi Doce, Odalipo, Emma Villavecchia
