Cabe, a VHS Elegy

Giulia Bean

“Cabe is an elegy through dance, an archive rediscovered, an analogical collection of collective memory about being fathers and a tangle of personal memories.
Ten years after the death of my father Carlo Bean - Cabe - I (re-)discovered his archive of 349 videotapes, each one numbered on the side and mostly containing films recorded from the television. The reason? So far, I don't know and this is one of the unanswered questions in this project.

Examining the tapes like an archaeologist, I looked for recurring patterns, as if by probing titles one after the other I would find the solution to the mystery. But no, maybe only my father knew the secret order, or maybe there was no order at all and only randomness. Some of the tapes contain only films by Woody Allen, Christmas comedies juxtaposed with selected films at the Cannes festival, or Kurosawa and a late eighties porno.

This is an ecosystem of archives dancing across magnetic tape, memories of collective memory, generations of fathers and daughters coexisting together with films through an interweaving of identity tales. The question at the heart of my choreographic research is: what remains of us in the objects we leave behind?
Can I find an archetype of paternity in a personal collection? What can I determine about my father through his archive?

The scenic expression of this process exploring the theme of fatherhood is the creation of a parallel universe, a fourth dimension beyond the fourth wall, where movement and a canyon of videotapes coexist. Cabe is born into a world covered with plastic and magnetic tape, a timeless creature that lives in memory and will accompany us on this last journey, an elegy for a creature that is still alive.
The family slides, the filaments of magnetic tape, the lists of films, the emotional records and the choreographic score become relics to be jealously guarded.
Movement and word intertwine. Audience and performer together become archaeologists and neurologists in search of that cerebral place that surrounds the heart of memory."
Giulia Bean

Running time: 45 minutes