Sónia Baptista

In 2017 I wrote a text that started sad and ended angry. It was called Querer do Corpo, Peso (‘A Body’s Want, Weight’). What I wanted was the weight of another body that would help me survive the onslaught of distressing, overwhelming events in the world. I performed that text live, my hands stained with the blood, fake and pink, of so many voices, silenced, ignored, stifled. Afterwards I continued to circle around sadness — mine, immense and inescapable. But I didn’t forget that with sadness, if you’re lucky, comes anger, and, if you’re lucky, the will to fight for the world to end. A world I consider unjust, unequal and brute. The answer, I think, is amorous, by way of love, but an interventive love, that yells, that bares its teeth, that takes a piece, leaves a dent, that isn’t polite or well-behaved, that speaks the truth, that cusses.

Throughout time, many have stood up against systems and symptoms of a society of decadent values and loves. Many men, many women. Many women learned to scream louder than the terrors of living — political, social, economic. Those screams are expressions of art, culture, cultivating doing good and living well, with others, with the world. Anger brings change, rage puts it into action. We must destroy in order to create, lose our composure, reveal the imposture of machinations, of power plays, we have to do better and speak vehemently, without fear of obvious passion.

The research and reflection for this group piece begins with classical texts, contemporary philosophy, essays on society and gender, on ecofeminism, on punk lifestyles that disturb established way of living. It’s a political piece, because politics is imagining a world that is different, and better, than the one we live in.

They say: it’s best if you don’t talk very loudly. We say: it’s better if we talk too loudly, the greatest violence is silence. We want to stain the stage with hopepunk, with that radical combination of optimism fed by the rage of wanting to change the status quo. We want to dance ragefully like in the movies.

Gentleness is Punk. Compassion is Radical. Appreciation is Subversive.

Notas Biográficas

Sónia Baptista nasceu em Lisboa. É formada em Dança Contemporânea pelo Fórum Dança. Em 2001, foi-lhe atribuído o Prémio Ribeiro da Fonte de Revelação na área da Dança pelo, então, Ministério da Cultura por Haikus, (o seu primeiro trabalho). Obteve, com distinção, o grau de Master Researcher in Choreography and Performance da Universidade de Roehampton em Londres, Reino Unido. No seu trabalho explora e experimenta com as linguagens da Dança,Performance, Música, Literatura, Teatro e Vídeo. Trabalha em direcção de movimento e dramaturgia.

Para além de textos e poemas publicados em várias publicações tem já seis livros publicados.
Colabora com a CNB, com o Fórum Dança e ESTC em projectos pedagógicos. Dos seus últimos trabalhos destaca em 2014, In the Fall the Fox, e naQueda Raposar, Festival Temps d’Images, 2015, A Falha de Onde a Luz, em 2016 estreou, no Festival Alkantara, Assentar Sobre a Subida das Águas e em 2017, Querer do Corpo, Peso, no São Luiz e Triste In English From Spanish, na Culturgest.

Ao longo do seu percurso artístico o seu trabalho foi apoiado pelo Ministério da Cultura/Secretaria de Estado da Cultura-DGartes, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian e Centro Nacional de Cultura. O seu trabalho tem sido apresentado em vários Festivais e Teatros em Portugal e no estrangeiro.

Artista Associada da AADK Portugal.