Daniel Matos is known for bold, sophisticated and physically intense choreographies, often working with particularly vigorous performers. Despite his young age, his language is remarkably mature and rigorous, being able to combine the energy and drive commonly associated with youth with a poetic sharpness more commonly found in more experienced artists.
- O ESPAÇO DO TEMPO
VÄRA is a choreographic object that arises from the urgency of the encounter between bodies. On stage, seven bodies inhabit a space surrounded by plastics, alluding to the display of meat in a butcher shop. It is here that they seek and enhance an attempt at dialogue through repetition, accumulating errors and amplifying the confrontation with each other’s reality.
The voracity of image consumption, as well as the normatization and reproduction of behaviors conveyed by the same consumption are traits imposed in the 21st century. The ways and means of communication are organized by the closed logic of this consumption, distancing us from the possibilities of a critical and autonomous relationship with reality. Returning to the most essential level of the field of the sensible opens the way to other relational possibilities, which diverge from the apparatus that performs the body as a way and end of consumption.
VÄRA summons the body as this sensitive field of possibilities. Echoing references such as Homer’s Odyssey and Antonin Artaud’s The Theater and its Double, the body is inscribed as a primitive place, as the transforming base matter of the being and its construction of reality. This naturalized, subjective, and solitary body reverberates its transforming power in the collective voice of the choreography. It is in the common space of the movement that they seek the encounter, and that, through repetition and experimentation, they accumulate mistakes and amplify the confrontation with the divergent reality of each one.
BIO & CREDITS
DANIEL MATOS. Choreographer, performer and visual artist. He has developed his work as a creator, artistic collaborator and performer nationally and internationally collaborating with Ana Borralho & João Galante, Angélica Liddell, Romeo Castellucci, Amélia Bentes, Luís Marrafa, Davis Freeman, among others. Since 2016, his work is focused on the body as a field of biographical, physical and emotional research, questioning and redesigning the idea of limits. In 2017, together with Joana Flor Duarte, he founded CAMA cultural association – a structure for the development of performing arts based in Lagos. He assumes the artistic direction and programming of PEDRA DURA – Festival de Dança do Algarve and the co-curation of Verão Azul – Festival Transdisciplinar de Artes Contemporâneas.
Artistic Direction, Creation and Plastic Conception: Daniel Matos
Performers and Co-Creation: Adriana Xavier, Lia Vohlgemuth, Jean-loup Gayrard, Mélanie Ferreira, Sofia Kafol, Joana Cunha Pinto e Marco Olival
Artistic Collaboration: Beatriz Marques Dias
Sound Design: João Galante aka Coolgate
Space: Daniel Matos, Joana Flor Duarte & Beatriz Marques Dias
Light Design: Manuel Abrantes
Light Assistance: Janaína Gonçalves
Technical Direction: Raúl Seguro
Communication Photography: Rui Palma
Photography: Bruno Simão
Video Capture and Editing: João Catarino
Clothing Consultory: Martim Alvarez
Textile Props: Marina Tabuado
Scenography Construction: Diogo Silva
Communication: Maria Tsukamoto
Production Management: Joana Flor Duarte
Residency Support: CAB Studios, Vitor Córdon / OPART Studios, Pro.Dança, CPBC, Escola de Dança de Lagos, Musibéria, Teatro Experimental de Lagos, Festival Verão Azul, Casa da Dança de Almada
Residency Co-Production: O Espaço do Tempo
Production: CAMA a.c.
Reception: Centro Cultural de Lagos, Festival Verão Azul & Teatro das Figuras
Co-Production: Câmara Municipal de Lagos, Teatro das Figuras, Festival Verão Azul/casaBranca
VÄRA is a project financed by Direção Geral das Artes / Portuguese Ministery of Culture and Garantir Cultura Compete 2020s
Special Thanks: Sofia Soromenho, Francisco Pedro, Rui Horta
Rui Horta started dancing at the age of 17 at Ballet Gulbenkian. He studied, taught and performed in New York for several years. In 1990, he founded the S.O.A.P Dance Theater Frankfurt, where he created, over 7 years, six programs which toured all over the world. From 1998 to 2000 he worked in Munich, at the Muffathalle, where he created “Bones & Oceans”, “Zeitraum” and “Blindspot”. In August 2000, he returned to Portugal (Montemor-o-Novo), where he founded the multidisciplinary center for research and creation O Espaço do Tempo.
Patrícia Portela is a writer and performance maker born in 1974, living between Belgium and Portugal. She studied set and costume design in Lisbon and in Utrecht where she made her master of arts, she has studied film in Ebeltoft at the European Film College, Denmark, and has a master in Philosophy from the International Institute of Leuven, Belgium. She is a founder member of the Prado cultural association since 2003 and a curator at the collective editions Prado since 2008. Patrícia Portela writes chronicles for Jornal de Letras, Jornal do Centro and Coffeepaste. She was the Artistic Director of Teatro Viriato from March 2020 to February 2022.
