OP.49
Throughout my artistic career I’ve been always confronted with an inevitable contradiction: my time of gestation and creation – a time sometimes dilated sometimes intersected, unpredictable, guided by desires, impulses, by non-linearity and even by indiscipline – enters in constant collisions with the established time, a time too regulated and repetitive.
Over three years I dedicated myself to reflect, experiment and learn about the world of amateurs' shows, and those, who in their leisure time dedicate their time to the artistic practice. Those, who do not have an obligation to build a status that legitimate themselves in the professional life, simply let themselves go by the pleasure they feel on what they do. Dance, theatre or 'show', has always been for me a pretext to find that space of freedom and pleasure, to find that place of “leisure time”, where it would be possible to reflect, digest or change the world and reality. And it is in that “leisure” time that I want to put myself, that the show, the event that I do, can be placed in that limbo “between” the finished and unfinished, the possible and impossible, the controlled and the liberating.
SOME NOTES ABOUT OP. 49
This piece was inspired by the story of Nicola Carter and her relationship with dance and music. Starting from the interaction music/sound and body/space, we were interested scenically to explore the different aspects and qualities of these connections. From the nature of the sound we have explored, on one hand, its abstract and non-descriptive character, allowing us to change the perception level and the creation of imaginaries, leaving an open space for readings, interpretations and various divagations, and on the other hand, to work on the sensation and the memory relations we establish with different sound sources and the physical space. We search for what of the most concrete exists in the sound and the possibilities of its activation trough the body and the space.
ABOUT NICOLA CARTER
Nicola Carter is an English woman I met in Nottingham during the research that I did about the amateur artists. What has stimulated me in her story was the peculiarity and originality of her path. Nicola has lived through a period of intense historical and political turmoil in Manchester during the 80s. This was the height of the clubbing boom (raves and nightclubs) resulting from the austerity of the time. The uncertain future provoked riots, strikes and violent demonstrations The relation that Nicola established afterwards with dance and arts in general was influenced by that experience, crucial to the way she developed her artistic practice, practice that has followed her until today, on her own occasional performances and installations.
Direction and concept
Miguel Pereira
Artistic direction assistance
Dinis Machado
Artistic Collaboration and special guest
Nicola Carter
Performer
Miguel Pereira
Sound design
Jari Marjamäki
Light design
Dinis Machado
Extras
to be defined
Co-productions
Maria Matos Teatro Municipal (Lisbon), Dance 4 (Nottingham)
Artistic residencies
Dance 4 (Nottingham), Cine Teatro São Pedro (Alcanena)
Support
Forum Dança
Production
O Rumo do Fumo
Aknowledgments
Ana Pais, André Guedes, Luísa Veloso, Vera Mantero and the students from PEPCC by Forum Dança
Project supported by Fundação Calouste de Gulbenkian.