ONE MYSTERIOUS THING, SAID E.E. CUMMINGS*
Concept and performance
Vera Mantero
Make-up Design
Alda Salavisa (original drawn by Carlota Lagido)
Props
Teresa Montalvão
Light
João Paulo Xavier
Light adaptation and operation
Bruno Gaspar
Executive Production
Forum Dança
Supports
Casa da Juventude de Almada, Re.al / Amascultura
Production
Culturgest, Lisbon, 1996 / 'Homage to Josephine Baker'
Duration
20 minutes
Homage to Josephine Baker at the Theatre Culturgest in Lisbon
“After listening to a speech on the radio by the Portuguese President Mario Soares (I don’t remember if it was during 10th June or 25th April), in which he spoke about the world at that time with something one might call an elevation of the spirit (something that unfortunately is surprising in a politician these days, so you listen to it with great pleasure), I connected that speech to Glenn Gould and to his Goldberg Variations (the ones of maturity), to Kazuo Ohno, and also to an expression that came into my mind: “greatness of soul”. My big wish of a victory of the spirit, is what I think this association reveals.
It is one thing that I would like to find or create: a vast territory in which richness of spirit prevails. (Is massification of education the answer?). This spirit I’m talking about has no wish to abolish the body, has no shame of its desire and of its sex, what this spirit wishes is to eradicate coarseness, the frightful foolishness, the deep ignorance, the poverty of horizons, the materialism, etc. etc. (unfortunately, this seems to be a long list...).
It would be a new dichotomy, not the overtired “body-spirit” (empty of meaning, frankly!), but the unhappily modern “stupidity-spirit” (or maybe “ignorance-spirit”) or all possible variants (It would be nice to make up my mind for one...).”
* What he really said about Josephine:
“one mysterious Thing, neither primitive or civilised, or beyond time, in the sense that emotion is beyond arithmetic”