is a solo that invokes the idea of how one lone body can represent a collective and common history, by way of a macro-research about the place of dance, specifically of dances of resistance and of political & social movements and their impact in our survival and manifestation of today’s bodies. The pivotal theme – SURVIVAL unfolds in two sub-vectors: SUBSISTENCE, after a disappearance, which maintains a connection with the previous piece FM [featuring mortuum], and PERMANENCE of traditions from past times, throughout the research on movements of resistance that rise as a structured and collective effort against an installed authority. UM [unimal] intends to investigate a continuous physicality in the virtuosity of its limits over a body that fights to remain on stage and whose perseverance and exhaustion contaminate and attract, such as a gladiator in an arena, the marathoner in competition or the lone climber in its escalade.
The explored physicality is MARCHing. To march, as a way to unravel walking, representing the movement of today and carrying out in its meaning the repetition of an organized body, that moves forward in a regular and deliberate course. Historically, marching emerges both in contexts of oppression and liberation, on both sides of the resistance, where there is the need to change and move forward together. The question then emerges: how can a march become a movement? In this piece, we work on the binomial dances of resistance/ resistance in dance. By giving live instructions and commands to the performer during the whole piece, through an in- ear system, concepts such as authorship, authority, freedom and leadership are being questioned.
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