There is a longer version of the performance, that you can watch at https://youtu.be/Sw2LUjFktHA
In a lecture-performance entitled Salário Máximo, presented at the Portuguese Parliament in Lisbon in 2014, Vera Mantero maintains that dance seems to her to be the least appropriate art form to discuss things. According to her, it’s easier to communicate a concrete idea through cinema or literature. This statement supports the commonly-held belief that dance, while it is a metaphor for thought, cannot speak. The apparent conflict here points to the relationship between politics and poetics, that can also be expressed as the dichotomy between written text — which can be translated — and the composition of gestures, action, and movements.
In his 18th century treatise, Raoul Fueillet proposes that dance be first written down on paper using a notation system he has devised, before being performed and transposed to the body. The idealization, written like a law, would be separate from the danced reality, resulting from a practice, in space. The process of transmission would be like dancing a language or speaking a dance, a process in which text and body interact in a negotiation between expression and communication.
João dos Santos Martins is an artist whose work encompasses different forms, including choreography, exhibition-making, and publishing. He studied at the Lisbon School of Dance and P.A.R.T.S. (Brussels), exerce (Montpellier) and the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies (Giessen). His practice articulates producing his own work and collaborating, as a dancer, with other choreographers such as Ana Rita Teodoro, Eszter Salamon, Moriah Evans, and Xavier Le Roy. He generally collaborates with other artists, such as Anthropocenas (2017) with Rita Natálio and Onde Está o Casaco? (2018) with Cyriaque Villemaux and Ana Jotta. He organised the cycle Nova — Velha Dança in Santarém in 2017, with performances, workshops, talks and exhibitions.
He created a format for the collective historicisation of dance in Portugal — Para Uma Timeline a Haver — with Ana Bigotte Vieira and founded a newspaper — Coreia — dedicated to producing discourse about art and artists, particularly in relation to dance. In 2020 he organized the PACAP 4 programme with Forum Dança.
Adriano Vicente is a dancer and performer. He studied dance at the Quorum Academy and P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels. He has performed in Dawn (2016) by Marten Spanberg, Louisianna 2017 and The Olympics by Nikima Jagudajev, 2018 by André e. Teodósio, and Xtraordinário by Teatro Praga. He also collaborates with DJ Audiopath on a project that combines electronic music, dance, and the body.
João Barradas is an accordionist, who moves between classical music, jazz, and improvised music. Composers such as Luís Tinoco, Fabrizio Cassol, and Dimitris Andrikopoulos have regularly composed new work for him over the years. He also researches, transcribes, and composes original music for the accordion. He is a winner of the World Accordion Trophy and the international competition at Castelfidardo and Okud Istra (Croatia). As a jazz accordionist, he has collaborated with artists like Greg Osby, Mark Turner, Aka Moon, Mike Stern, Gil Goldstein, Fabrizio Cassol, Mark Colenburg, Jacob Sacks, Miles Okasaki, Rufus Reid and Jerome Jennings, among others. Directions, his first album for the New York record label Inner Circle, was nominated for best album of the year by Downbeat magazine.
Choreography João dos Santos Martins
Performer Adriano Vicente
Music and live performance João Barradas
Text José Maria Vieira Mendes
Text in Portuguese Sign Language Sofia Fernandes
Light Filipe Pereira
Costumes Constança Entrudo
Produced by Sofia Matos/Materiais Diversos
Executive producer Claraluz Keiser/Associação Parasita e Association Mi-mai
Coproduced by Alkantara, Associação Parasita, Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Materiais Diversos Arts Residencies Alkantara, Centro Cultural Malaposta, Studios Victor Córdon, 23 Milhas – Ílhavo
Special thanks Sandra Gorete Coelho
Materiais Diversos, Associação Parasita and Alkantara are funded by República Portuguesa | Cultura-Direção Geral das Artes.
João dos Santos Martins (1989) is one of the most unique choreographers of his generation, as his artistic work reflects – in an almost literal way – the research he has developed over the last few years on what it is and what can be dance as a discipline. Having developed an artistic work that has marked his presence in several Portuguese and international cultural institutions, dos Santos Martins created, in addition to his collaborative works, Projecto Continuado, in 2015, with which he won the prize of the Portuguese Society of Authors for Choreography in 2016 (SPA).
In my view, Choreography is presented as a game that exposes the relationship between signs and their materialities, between the degrees of kinship in the sphere of the symbolic, listening to languages of various origins on stage (gesture, voice , text). Almost anthropologically and covering choreography with an ironic academic didacticism, dos Santos Martins proposes a performance study on the bases of communication and on what understanding is in its power. Choreography gathers and crosses, in a relationship of overlap and equivalence, a set of gestures, words (in their various dimensions), musical, choreographic phrases, sounds, purified in their composition. In a show that can resemble a performed conference, with choreographic and musical resources, we see our attention concentrated on the performer Adriano Vicente, who, accompanied by the musician João Barradas, presents the show and its parts, interpreting them then, through several games of translation, transposition, transformation, to ascertain and test the sign’s intelligibility. Vicente carries with him a text by the Portuguese playwright José Maria Vieira Mendes that also participates in the demonstration of the difficulties, weaknesses and possibilities that the very idea of interpreting involves.
Mickael de Oliveira
CONTACTS
Sofia Matos / Materiais Diversos
Phone: +531 913633452
sofia.matos@materiaisdiversos.com
Mickael de Oliveira was born in France, in 1984, and has lived in Portugal since 1999. In 2013, he got his Ph.D. in contemporary Portuguese and European dramaturgy from the School of Humanities – University of Lisbon, where he is post-doctoral fellow researching the presence of literature in contemporary theatre and dance. In 2008, Mickael founded Colectivo 84, the theatre company for which he develops playwriting and directing projects. His work O que é teu entregou aos mortais was distinguished with the Maria Matos New Playwriting Award (Maria Matos Municipal Theatre, 2007), and Clytemnestra received an Honorable Mention – António José da Silva Prize (D. Maria II National Theatre, Lisbon / FUNARTE, Brazil, 2012). Some of his most recent productions include Oslo–Fuck Them All and Everything Will Be Wonderful (co-created with Nuno M Cardoso, Gil Vicente Academic Theatre, São Luiz Municipal Theatre), The Constitution (2016, Dona Maria National Theatre), and the diptych Socrates Must Die (Socrates’ Death / The Life of John Smith, 2017/2018, Vila Flor Cultural Centre, São Luiz Municipal Theatre, Viriato Theatre, Gil Vicente Academic Theatre. Mickael has served as the artistic director of END – New Dramaturgy Encounters, a project that aims to foster new Portuguese and international playwriting (1st edition at the São Luiz Municipal Theatre, Lisbon, Nov. 2010; 2nd and 3rd editions at the Gil Vicente Academic Theatre, March, Coimbra, 2015/2019). He was Assistant Professor of Arts Administration and Artistic Studies at the School of Education and Humanities (Leiria), guest Lecturer at the School of Theatre and Film Studies (Lisbon), and guest Assistant Professor at the School of Humanities – University of Coimbra. From September 2011 to August 2015, Mickael was Assistant Artistic Director of the Gil Vicente Academic Theatre (Coimbra).
Patrícia Portela is a writer and performance maker born in 1974, living between Belgium and Portugal. She has a BA in set and costume design by the high school of theatre and cinema of Lisbon, a Masters of Arts in scenography and dramaturgy of space from the University of Utrecht and Saint Martins college of art in Antwerp, a post-graduation in theatricality and performativity from APT in Antwerp, a film stage at the European film school in Ebeltoft, Denmark, and a Masters in Philosophy of the University of Leuven, Belgium. Since 2003 she has worked on her own performances and installations in collaboration with international artists. She has achieved national and international recognition for her unusual work and is considered one of the most daring artists and innovative writers of her generation. She won the Revelation Prize in 1994 for her creative work in performance and cinema, the Prize Teatro na Década for T5 in 1999, the Gulbenkian Foundation Prize Madalena de Azeredo Perdigão for the performance Flatland I in 2004 and was one of the 5 finalists of the Sonae Media Art Prize 2015 with her installation Parasomnia, amongst other prizes. She has been invited to participate in the prestigious International Writing Program (IWP) at the University of Iowa in 2013 and to be the first Outreach Fellow. She was the first literary resident in Berlin in 2016, sponsored by the Portuguese Embassy in Germany/Instituto Camões. She lectures “dramaturgy and space” and “image” regularly at Universities and cultural centers in Portugal (such as University of Minho or University of Lisbon) and abroad (University of Antwerp, Escola de Escrita in Curitiba, etc). She is the author of several novels, short stories and performances, such as Dias úteis (2016, considered one of the books of the year by several reviewers) or Banquet (finalist at the Novel Prize of APE 2012). She is a chronicle writer for the prestigious Jornal de Letras since 2017 and for the National Radio Antena 1.
Rui Horta was one of the most influencial choreographers of his generation, his work being presented all over the world such as the Theatre de la Ville, that co-produced it for over a decade. He directed S.O.A.P. at the Mousonturm, and created for many companies such as NDT, Cullberg, Geneva, Gotemburg, etc. 
