A ROSE OF MUSCLES
Choreography and performance
Vera Mantero
Music
Bruno d'Almeida
Costume
Carlota Lagido
Light Designer
João Paulo Xavier from an original of Rui Fernandes
Production
ACARTE
Support
Companhia Nacional de Bailado
Duration
15 min
This piece was not an original idea of mine. It was a commission of Acarte for the celebration of Nijinsky’s centenary. I guess I would never do a solo on Nijinsky if it weren’t for that. It’s good to do something you would never. It was also the first solo I choreographed. It was fortunate enough to choreograph it while it was studying in New York, a town where you feel happy for all the information available around you. I ran through the life and work of Vaslav Nijinsky, glad to meet more deeply such a fascinating character. What stroke me the most: the role sensuality played in him: the ecstasy he provoked in audiences and him himself; the inevitability of his art , either for survival or annihilation; the kind of dance in which he trained and worked for years – ballet – and the totally innovative and opposite on he created with his choreography ; and finally the turbulence and speed of his life, which his spirit couldn’t take. But the solo could not be based only in Nijinsky because I was the one who was going to “talk” about him – I was on the scene to. So this is a picture of my picture of the portrayed.
Vera Mantero
“...A creator gifted with an unusual sensibility, who uses a very personal language, it is when she dances her pieces that the work of Vera Mantero appears to us in all its truth. Her strength on stage is the result of a unique combination between technique and contained movement, which develop over an exceptional knowledge of manipulating rhythm.”
Excepts of text in the program by André Lepecki