In 2013 Francisco Camacho recreated "The King in Exile" a solo that was premiered in 1991 and presented that same year at Klapstuk festival in Leuven, launching from that moment on Camacho choreographic career in Europe.
In this solo Camacho drew his inspiration from the figure of Dom Manuel II, the last king of Portugal, who was knowned as "the Patriot" or "the Unfortunate" ascending the throne after the assassination of his father, King Carlos I of Portugal, and his elder brother, Luís Filipe, Prince of Portugal. His reign ended with the dissolution of the monarchy with the 5 October 1910 Portuguese revolution, and Manuel lived the rest of his life in exile enforced by the new Portuguese First Republic.
In a exploration of political power , this solo that merges history and autobiography summarizes Camacho's ongoing explorations of a body whose identity is captured within the traps of history and representation.
We have Camacho's voice, the voice of Dom Manuel II and the voice of António Cabral, who chronicled the life of the exiled king. All three characters collapse into one single body whose status is ambiguous: neither self-performing nor performing an Other, neither totally autobiographical nor historical, this body lingers in representation, suggesting that "being" is but representation proper. By withdrawing himself from the field of the Other, by constituting himself as exiled, lost and lonely, Camacho underlines in this piece the pathologies of the (Portuguese) representational field as inhabited by a constitutional blindness - a constitutional blindness that states that Portugal is both "unthinkable" and "invisible.
In 2013 Francisco Camacho recreated "The King in Exile" a solo that was premiered in 1991 and presented that same year at Klapstuk festival in Leuven, launching from that moment on Camacho choreographic career in Europe.
In this solo Camacho drew his inspiration from the figure of Dom Manuel II, the last king of Portugal, who was knowned as "the Patriot" or "the Unfortunate" ascending the throne after the assassination of his father, King Carlos I of Portugal, and his elder brother, Luís Filipe, Prince of Portugal. His reign ended with the dissolution of the monarchy with the 5 October 1910 Portuguese revolution, and Manuel lived the rest of his life in exile enforced by the new Portuguese First Republic.
In a exploration of political power , this solo that merges history and autobiography summarizes Camacho's ongoing explorations of a body whose identity is captured within the traps of history and representation.
We have Camacho's voice, the voice of Dom Manuel II and the voice of António Cabral, who chronicled the life of the exiled king. All three characters collapse into one single body whose status is ambiguous: neither self-performing nor performing an Other, neither totally autobiographical nor historical, this body lingers in representation, suggesting that "being" is but representation proper. By withdrawing himself from the field of the Other, by constituting himself as exiled, lost and lonely, Camacho underlines in this piece the pathologies of the (Portuguese) representational field as inhabited by a constitutional blindness - a constitutional blindness that states that Portugal is both "unthinkable" and "invisible.