Accompanied by Steve Reich’s pulsating music, the Afro-Brasilian dancer’s mighty body frees itself from a narrow, wet and hot glass shaft and dives into a field of callae. This fleshy flower’s elegant bloom constitutes one of the recurring images in the works of famous and controversial American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, for whom Ismael Ivo created this piece as a moving dance monument. „I chose Mapplethorpe for two reasons“, claims Ismael Ivo. „He managed, out of merely observing the black male body from his perspective, to bring to light the mythical fantasies related to this body. (...) As a male black dancer I decided to make use of this extraordinary artist’s visions, and, by following my own feelings, to turn them into movement.“ His image doubled up by a huge mirror, Ivo is developing the power behind his fierce desire, is turning into a completely naked, shining body sculpture. While Giuseppe di Stefano is singing „E lucevan le stelle“ from Puccini’s Tosca, Ismael Ivo, resembling a blood-red effigy, celebrates a good-bye – the fading of live and the inexorable decomposition of the flesh. „With means of aesthetical reduction, reminiscent of the orient, the dancer stages a feast of the senses for the photographer; calligraphic purity of the highest degree aptly bans the explosive power of a ticklish matter“, stated well known Italian critic Elisa Vaccarino after the piece’s premiere at the 2002 Venice biennale.