CORNÉLIA BOOM

Saturday, 24.02 09h47

[2008]

  • Proposed by Sheila Arêas
  • Re-signifying matter is one of the aesthetic obsessions of the English visual artist Cornelia Parker. Distorting, melting, crushing or even exploding materials, in this case, constitute the technical procedures for redefining objects, arousing unusual associations between their modified form and their original context. In 1991, the artist enlisted the British Army to literally send a wooden shed filled with pre-chosen objects to be transformed. From the detailed collection and reassembly of the exploded fragments, the installation Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View appeared.

Conceived and created by Sheila Arêas and Cristian Duarte, this solo carries “cornelian” procedures for its movement research. The question of automatism in the Ballet Coppélia (comic-sentimental ballet based on a macabre story by ETA Hoffmann entitled “Der Sandmann” published in 1815) was one of the choices that Cristian and Sheila adopted as material during their creative process, for presenting themselves as a device that dialogues with current issues of the environment where this creation is developed – São Paulo-Brazil.

Cornélia Boom transits through references of this context, to create an ambivalent dance to renew our perception with humor and critical potential.

  • Performance: Sheila Arêas
  • Directed by: Cristian Duarte
  • Conception and Creation: Sheila Arêas and Cristian Duarte
  • Pre-elaboration of the project: Laura Bruno
  • Light design: André Boll
  • Costume Designer: Sheila Arêas and Cristian Duarte
  • Track editing: Cristian Duarte (manipulated fragments of music composed by Léo Delibes for Ballet Coppélia and Introduction of the Anthem of the state of São Paulo)
  • Circus Orientation: Erica Stoppel
  • Technical assembly of the rope: Ricardo Rodrigues
  • Photography: Rogério Ortiz
  • Graphic design: Cristian Duarte
  • Special participation: Mariana Kurowski (student of EMB – Municipal School of Bailado de São Paulo)
  • Production: Cristian Duarte and Sheila Arêas
  • Acknowledgments: Barco Virgilio, Thelma Bonavita, Thiago Granato, Maria Jorge, Sandro Amaral, Zeca de Sousa, Ricardo Rodrigues, Rodrigo Matheus and Municipal School of Bailado de São Paulo.
  • Premiered at 12th English Culture Festival on 23, 24 and 25 May 2008, Duke of York Auditorium/São Paulo
  • “With wide-open signs like the São Paulo uniform and the high-top sneakers, the where and who are given. But nothing is so obvious. Cristian Duarte/Dr.Cornelius presents with his direction an ironic critique of a type of dance that gains dramatic nuances and layers that cross the epidermis, muscles and reach the central nervous system. And it can hurt, sometimes. But it’s still fun. Such cornelian procedures, based on the artist Cornelia Parker, pose risks for the dancer and the audience. The shadow is evident in the spasms of the body. Between double personality (doctor and monster, to be and not to be!?) give themselves the events. There are internal pulses that overflow and made me think of the Tourrette syndrome … Uncontrollable, erupt into deformation. The other side lurks all the time, reminding us how far we are from perfection. Between impossibility and desire, what happens? Can a defective doll fit? Sheila Arêas brings the comic and the tragic in an interpretation that fascinates by her technical refinement, by the corporal delivery and capacity of communication. An engagement that also caused me to twist. Finally, in the spatial shift of what one is not, in the vision of the ideal, there is in contemplation, a sad and sensitive poetry, an acid desolation, which, while eroding notions of the beautiful and the right, actualizes them.” by Leticia Olivares in the frame of Modos de Existir Festival, SESC Santo Amaro, April 2013.