[2003]
- Inspired by Lakoff and Johnson’s Philosophy in the Flesh, about the metaphoric structures underlying each mode of thought, embodied results from a creative process experienced as a theoretical-practical group of studies on the concept of “embodied mind”, according to which human concepts – such as the nature of time, self, mind, morality, causality – are not reflections of an external reality, but are formed by our bodily experience, ie by our sensorimotor system.
Our investigative interest was to treat the creation process as a discussion environment, where it was possible to focus each body and its respective action patterns as a particular reality, to investigate and question how we define the concepts we use in interaction with the world.
Discussion understood as an adaptive process between different ideas. Ideas understood as formulations generated by the relationship between body and environment. Environment understood not as a place where things happen, but as a set of circumstantial possibilities for generating events – by connection.
- Creation and performance: Cristian Duarte (br), Fabiana D. Britto (br), Shani Granot (il), Peter Fol (be)
- Concept: Cristian Duarte
- Advise: Fabiana Dultra Britto
- Tech: Peter Fol
- Photography: Anna Van Kooij
- Coproduced by: Théâtre de la Bastille (Paris); DEPARTS (supported by the European Commission “Culture 2000” programme); Springdance/works (Utrecht); WERKHUIS/producties (Brussels) e Melkweg (Amsterdam)
- Acknowledgments: Helena Katz, Flavio Rodrigues, Jan Maertens, Jan Ritsema, Bojana Cvejic, Theo Van Rompay, Hanne Van Waeyenberge, Pierre Thys, Csaba Varga.
- Premiere date: 23.04.2003 at Springdance Festival, Utrecht/Holanda
- Playlist:
Springdance Festival, Utrecht, 23 & 24/04/2003
Melkweg, Amsterdam, 14, 15 & 16/05/2003
Beursschouwburg, Bruxelas, 25, 26 & 27/02/2004
Théatrê de la Bastille, Paris, 26, 27, 29 & 30/04/2004
Amperdans/Monty, Antuérpia, 06 e 07 de outubro 2004
L1 Festival, Budapeste, 10 de Fevereiro 2005
Rotterdam Schouwburg, 19 de fevereiro 2005
STUK, Leuven, 22 e 23 de fevereiro 2005
Something Raw Festival, Amsterdam, 25 e 26/02/2005
Weimar/Germany, 06 de março 2005
Mounsonturm, Frankfurt, 06 and 07/05/2005
Brasil, Sao Paulo, SESC, 24 and 27 Agosto 2005
Teatro Municipal de Araraquara, 07 Setembro 2005
Intransit Festival, Berlin, 30 e 31st Maio 2006 - Some notes after the first run-through
by Bojana Cvejic (Brussels, April 17th ’03)
“Embodied” takes a frame and a form I couldn’t nail down into a ‘normal’ or normative methodology and practice of dance performance. It evades the common-sense question of what it is or could be about, although this question is triggered by a switch of regimes, a textual one, where performers give explicit “I”- statement or an excerpt of a “we”- scientific/theoretical discourse, and a dance regime, where the other two performers are engaged in movement of contact and communication. As the form and the frame were not pre-given to be significant for coherence but determined by juxtaposition of sections shaped by their own materials, this intertwining of texts and solo/duo dances makes them inform but not explain one another.
That’s why one can’t easily come to terms with questions: is it about body intelligence? is it about behaviourism? are they developing movement according to friction and resistance from two bodies in contact and from the made-present surface of the ground?
Inasmuch as it parishes, the motivation to recognize any gender-relationship or personal involvement of the performers, what comes into focus is the materiality of the gestures and movement the two dancers develop.
The most striking the “breast-dance” and the duo in which female body first comes as an obstacle, an organ attached to detach the male organism in his centrality of mastering the space.
The materiality unfolds as the movement is guided by an act of encountering/experiencing the flesh, the flesh of the breast, the flesh of the female body making visible what remains, resists or blurs a more severe anatomical manipulation.”
