João dos Santos Martins
Coreografia
- 12.10 — 07.11 2020
- Artists in Residence
- Espaço Alkantara
In a lecture-performance entitled Salário Máximo, presented at the Portuguese Parliament in Lisbon in 2014, Vera Mantero says that dance seems to her to be the least appropriate art form to talk about things. According to her, it's easier to transmit a concrete idea in cinema or literature. This statement supports the commonly-held belief that dance, while it is a metaphor for thought, cannot speak. The apparent conflict here points to the relationship between politics and poetics, that can also be expressed as the dichotomy between written text — which is permeable to translation — and the composition of gestures, action, and movements.
In his 18th century treatise, Raoul Fueillet proposes that dance be first written down on paper using a notation system he has devised, before being performed and transposed to the body. The idealisation, written like a law, would be separate from the danced reality, resulting from a practice, in space. The process of transmission would be like dancing a language or speaking a dance, a process in which text and body interact in a negotiation between expression and communication.
João dos Santos Martins, July 2020
Coreografia premieres at Teatro Viriato in Viseu on November 18, and will be presented in LIsbon as part of the 2020 Alkantara Festival.
João dos Santos Martins (Santarém, 1989) é um artista cujo trabalho abrange várias formas como a coreografia, a exposição e a edição. Começou por estudar na Escola Superior de Dança, em Lisboa, e na P.A.R.T.S., em Bruxelas, e concluiu os seus estudos entre o exerce, em Montpellier, e o Instituto para Estudos de Teatro Aplicado, em Giessen. Desde 2008, tem articulado a sua prática entre a produção de peças e a colaboração como bailarino com outros autores como Ana Rita Teodoro, Eszter Salamon, Moriah Evans e Xavier Le Roy. As suas peças são geralmente...