Bodies in Progress

“When a woman becomes aware of conception, she stops being an individual and becomes, instead, an inhabited multiplicity.”
— Joan Raphael-Leff

Every movement reflected a dialogue with something—or someone—not yet here, while also saying goodbye to who we once were. It was a dense choreography of bold and tender exchanges in a shared space where past and future were present at the same time.

What did this experience of shared existence do to a woman?
And how did she live in her body as the process unfolded?

All of us began life inside another human body—caught in a continuous exchange: taking in nutrients, absorbing the hormonal traces of emotion, and releasing our biological waste through the mother’s body. In Joan Raphael-Leff’s terms, this first experience of intercorporeality—where “me” and “not me” were entwined—opened a way to think about how our earliest connections shape us for a lifetime.

Bodies in Progress was presented exclusively between April and July 2024, during weeks 22 to 38 of Martina Hajdyla Lacová’s pregnancy. Each performance was therefore a one-off event, impossible to repeat.

For her performance in Bodies in Progress, Martina Hajdyla Lacová received the Thalia Award 2024 in the Alternative Theatre category.