There are seven of them, like the days of the Creation. Seven dancers or physical incarnations of controlled oneirism. They rise up, moving between a sour limbo of waking and sleep, trance-like and conditioned. That of their demiurge is also on stage, Tania Carvalho, at the piano.
Light is ‘day’ and shadow is ‘night’.
This piece is called ‘Oneironaut’, the name used by travellers able to control their dreams and change the outcomes, devising a world of images that makes sense to them alone.
Tânia Carvalho is one of them. A creator who invites us to witness her lucid journey. A clairvoyant. Spectators of dream fragments at times dark as those of a choreographer who has long sought to evict the outcomes of her nightmares. Strangling them out of the darkness. Letting loose the tricks that play on her mind.
Tania Carvalho creates moving, chilling paintings, which jolt you like disturbing dreams, from which you wake up groggy and trembling. But always inspired. Awakened.
(translated by Rebecca Vicenzi)
Tânia Carvalho was born in Viana do Castelo and lives in Lisbon. Best known as a choreographer, with a career spanning over 20 years, she also works in other artistic fields such as music, drawing and film.
Her choreography work includes pieces for the Lyon Opera Ballet (Xylographie), the Company of Elders in London (I Walk, You Sing), the National Ballet of Portugal (S), the Paulo Ribeiro Company (How will I do this?) and Dançando com a Diferença (Doesdicon), among many others.
She has been developing several musical projects, of which stand out Madmud, Idiolecto and dubloc barulin. In 2018, she directed A Bag and a Stone – dance piece for screen, her first film.
Winner of the Young Creators Award 2000, with Inicialmente Previsto, she also received the 2012 Prémio Autores from the Portuguese Society of Authors, for Icosahedron.
Choreography and Direction Tânia Carvalho
Rehearsal Assistant Luís Guerra
Musicians André Santos, Tânia Carvalho
Dancers Bruno Senune, Catarina Carvalho, Cláudio Vieira, Filipe Baracho, Luís Guerra, Marta Cerqueira, Vânia Doutel Vaz / Patricia Keleher
Music Frédéric Chopin, Tânia Carvalho
Light Design Anatol Waschke, Tânia Carvalho
Costumes Cláudio Vieira, Tânia Carvalho (mostly Só Dança items)
Shoes Só Dança Vegan Line
Technical Direction Anatol Waschke
Sound Technician Juan Mesquita
Production Tânia Carvalho (until 2020), Agência 25 (since 2021)
Executive Production João Guimarães (until 2020), Cláudia Teixeira (since 2021)
Financial management and administration Vítor Alves Brotas
Booking Colette de Turville
Press office Sara Ramos
Artistic Residencies Centro Criação de Candoso – Centro Cultural Vila Flor, CSC Garage Nardini – Bassano del Grappa, KLAP Maison Pour la Danse, O Espaço do Tempo
Coproduction Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Culturgest, KLAP Maison Pour la Danse, Teatro Municipal do Porto Rivoli – Campo Alegre, Théâtre de la Ville – Paris
Finantial Support Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Support Com Calma – Espaço Cultural
Sponsorship Só Dança
Thanks to Academia de Bailado de Guimarães
In April 2020, the democratic doubt that the pandemic came to install, motivated the creation of the BoCA Online cycle, with a program over ten weeks. We produced ignorance, doubts and questions about the future of performance. Tânia Carvalho was one of the artists who conceived a performance that thought of the body-chamber-home relational device, from her own home (“Like a layer of scales well closed”). However, it is mainly from reduced and closed spaces – the house or the dressing room – that Tânia usually engraves herself and where she experiences movements and forms with her body. In “Onironauta” we understand how these forms concentrated in the body expand on stage – sometimes they remind us of expressionism or surrealism (Cocteau). A body that twirls on itself and that, suddenly, opens and touches the ends of space. This Vitruvian gesture of fitting a body into the figure of a square or circle, alludes to the concentration of the body within a closed house / architecture. In the performance, a dancer reproduces this extremist gesture, which seems to indicate a desire to cut through repetition and difference, a vocabulary that enchants throughout the show. The extreme (of the sentences and their choreographic language) and the extremities (of the body and the rhythm of the performers) stand out in “Onironauta”. The architecture of the dream is an architecture of hypotheses, combining composition and destruction, which proposes a vicious ambiguity of genders and styles (male and female; modern and classic) and which characterize the fascinating and timeless choreographic language of Tânia Carvalho. In this performance, it is the choreographer herself who seems to lead the dream, rhythmizing it and filtering it through the music she plays on the piano. Like the language of the fascinating drawings she conceives (“Toledo” exhibition), “Onironauta” is a relic of movements in chain and in flight, in unfolding and repetition, that cradles us. “I’m going down, deep inside” sings Tânia at the piano. And we trust it, we go as far as she allows us to be taken.
John Romão
CONTACTS
Nacional: Vítor Alves Brotas
vab@agencia25.pt / +351 925 680 118
Internacional: Colette de Turville
cdeturville@orange.fr / Mobile : 0033 (0) 6 08 48 50 48
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. 
