Studio Orta

Wandering, focuses our attention to a gypsy dancer who is aroused by traditional eastern-European melodies. The dancer is wearing lavishly colourful silk skirts with immense flower prints, which she happily whirls around. This is a subjective but culturally rooted act, a romantic ritual, bursting with energy, with a sense of joyous faith.
"The short film evokes a shared aesthetic and a collective ritual, the strong attitude of the Roma culture with regards to music and dance. What strikes us are the gestures and concentration of circular, quick or slow, spontaneous or poetical movements, always changing without losing rigor; at times the motion of the dancer, is ironically affected. They express the flowing, the virtually infinite meeting of courses, of acts, of destinies, of stories; narrating; time that passes and survives, the afterwards, beyond ruptures and discontinuity. But also modernity that does not erase tenaciously rooted habits. If the nomadism attributed to the Roma today tends to become a pretext to deprive them of the possibility of settling in one place and establishing bonds, seeing Wandering is like walking down the road, the history of the Roma people, repeating their wanderings by recuperating the most vital and fecund aspects." Gabi Scardi, Biennale de Lyon, 2009

"The motifs and dress-styles across Eastern Europe to Asia continue to nourish my imagination. I visited the Roma villages in Romania where the women still wear the brightly printed traditional floral patterns and the elders hand-stitch their dress and patchwork together layers of long skirts synonymous with a woman's coming of age. I listened to their music and the Roma women danced, transforming the skirt into a powerfully defiant, feminine device that cast away any cultural prudery." Lucy Orta