PRESS UM GESTO QUE NÃO PASSA DE UMA AMEAÇA [A

PRESS
UM GESTO QUE NÃO PASSA DE UMA AMEAÇA
[A GESTURE THAT IS NOTHING BUT A THREAT]
P2/PÚBLICO Dance review by Luísa Roubaud
The irrepressible appeal for the unknown - Jul 2011
“For a human being, there is no other psychophysical experience as one of an emotion. The spontaneous
course of our mental wanderings follows connections that are subtracted from the rules of reason and
functional thoughts. In “A gesture that is nothing but a threat”, Sofia Dias (b.1983) and Vítor Roriz (b.1980)
invite us to a journey to the enigmatic world of the mechanisms of the unconscious. This is, however, the
starting point and not the arrival, of an experimental dance that makes the audience witness of an
exploratory quest.
The show seems to be based on improvisation and in a thorough introspective listening. But we are far
from a catharsis: Dias and Roriz launched themselves, literally, body and soul on an intense
brainstorming, mental and verbal, and it is from there that all the dramaturgical dynamics radiates;
however, under the apparent free association, the attention in the most tiniest details with which body and
voice give scenic visibility to the enigmatic conductive line that connects the material presented, denotes
decantation and selection, control over the risk.
Had the blackout just happened on the small amphitheatre of CCB’s Boxnova, already the performers
challenged the audience with a paradoxical request: “open your eyes…”
The frugal scenic environment and the thrifty light work, drew all the attention to the dense and
concentrated presence of the performers (with informal jeans and t-shirts in a discrete chromatic
composition). Only the voices or the sounds of the body, and a few recorded notes filled the sound
ambience. In the background, the enlarged image of lush vegetation, two cups and a small cactus in a pot
rested in a black parallelepiped, a rectangular table and two chairs, were the brief allusions to a
recognisable quotidian with which the performers outlined intentions of interaction most of the times
inconclusive. Movements and facial expressions, obsessively repeated, morph in their very effect of
execution and intonation. The inscrutable energetic cycles of body and mind are brought up to surface,
from which spring fortunate and unpredictable senses, which dissipate on the exact moment of their
formation.
In “A gesture…”, the eighth creation in collaboration since 2006, Dias (National Conservatory) and Roriz
(Physical Education and Sports) accomplish a thematic and idiomatic universe whose contours have been
gaining consistency, and ways of composition that seem to bring to dance procedures from the surrealism.
In their performance, of a demanding physical and mental delivery, the cruelty of the subjective catalyses
and resonates the core of vital and universal human experiences. A trajectory that evokes drive of a
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pathway with no return, the irrepressible and disturbing desire for the abyss, suggested in the words
whispered by Sofia Dias before the final blackout: “no way back”.
THE METROPOTAM (romainian cultural website)
Explore Dance Festival winners – A gesture that is nothing but a threat - Nov 17, 2011
“Judging by the name, many would think that the Explore Dance Festival is an event only for dance lovers
which includes performances that are related only to that side of art. Passing over any preconceived idea,
we want to tell you that things are not like that, and representations that took place in the festival showed
the complexity that can come when it comes to braiding feelings and views on life and art.
Dance, in fact, means much more than simple definition that would arise in the mind the first utterance of
the word, it is not only in coordinating the various parts of the body according to the music provided by the
context, as many would think. In fact, dancing can mean something different for each of us, primarily an
expression of personality through movement, through gestures, or any other form of body manifestation,
secondly, a release within the norms of physical behavior that are subjected in society and thirdly, it can
also be anything each one wants, whether we are observers or dancers.
Every time the thoughts remain, fascinated by the capacities of expression of the human being, as I was
after I saw the show "A Gesture That is Nothing but a threat" of Portuguese choreographers, Sofia Dias
and Vitor Roriz, who have won the Prix Jardin d'Europe.
Two people, a table and two chairs are more than enough to send an amalgam of ideas and feelings, we
realize, and I look curious. The instigation that starts the show is simple, but full of meaning: "Open your
eyes!" tell us two, and we choose to listen, realizing that having opened eyes is much more than just lifting
the eyelid reflex action which we are accustomed.
The following can be summarized and described in words or following a logical, because everything that
happens between the two, during the 40 minutes, you is unlike any typical situation in which people are
found in everyday society. We are witnessing a game of words and tone of voice, the two communicate
throughout the show. Based on a word manoeuvre, to get to another word, then another and so on.
The two complete each other and they exchange playful verbal construction, always maneuvering their
voice in different ways, climbing or descending tone, singing, whispering or chanting. The result of these
games often provokes laughter, but silence interposed from time to time is to emphasize the philosophical
substrate of performance.
Their movements underly this unconventional dialogue, and are as illogical as puzzling, putting us in front
of the concept of "threat" that can be applied if the abuse or misuse of the word. A word as a threat, as the
title says, can have a big weigh for people without really meaning anything. The power of words and the
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traps in which we are caught daily, because of social norms that can make us lose completely different
substrates and inner feelings that actually do not need any words to be expressed.
The freedom that our minds give us is huge, a thought with which I left the show, reinterpreting the ability
to use voice and body language to restore what we understand, but then I realize that thought is transient
and that those social norms will always be dominant ...
About Sofia and Vitor you can learn more by reading their blog, and to see how the connection between
them is, here is another clip from their show, called ‘Unfolding’.”
PÚBLICO
Portuguese Dance highlighted in Europe. Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz win the award Jardin d’Europe
- Oct 15, 2011
“The Portuguese duo of choreographers Sofia Dias and Victor Roriz received on Saturday in Bucharest,
the award Jardin d’Europe, ten thousand euros, awarded by an international jury composed of eight critics
with the show "A gesture that is nothing but a threat”, presented last Wednesday at 6th Xplore Dance
Festival held in the Romanian capital, the choreography was distinguished from all the rest of the works
presented by the emerging European dance scene.
The Prix Jardin d'Europe, in its fourth edition, is the most important distinction to European contemporary
creation and is a collaboration between 14 institutions, including the ImPulsTanz in Vienna, and Ultima
Vez Co., in Brussels. The festival iDans in Istanbul or the company Cullberg Ballet in Stockholm.
In the review published in P2 at the premiere of "A gesture that is nothing but a threat" at Centro Cultural
de Belém in Lisbon on the 2nd July this year, Luísa Roubaud wrote: "The show seems to be based on
improvisation and in a thorough introspective listening. But we are far from a catharsis: Dias and Roriz
launched themselves, literally, body and soul on an intense brainstorming, mental and verbal, and it is
from there that all the dramaturgical dynamics radiates; however, under the apparent free association, the
attention in the most tiniest details with which body and voice give scenic visibility to the enigmatic
conductive line that connects the material presented, denotes decantation and selection, controlled
prevalence over the risk. " The choreography deserved 4 out of 5 stars.
"A gesture that is nothing but a threat" will be presented on the 22nd October in Évora (International
Festival of Contemporary Dance), 12th November in Estarreja (Cine-Theatre Estarreja), and 24-26
November in Lisbon (Espaço Alkantara).”
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IMPULSETANZ
4th Prix Jardin d’Europe goes to Sofia Dias & Vítor Roriz - Oct 2011
The winners of the Prix Jardin d’Europe were nominated by a jury consisting of 8 young dance journalists
from 7 countries who took at the same time part in the mentoring program Critical Endeavour for emerging
dance writers during the eXplore dance festival.
The jury announced that the work A Gesture that is Nothing but a Threat of Dias and Roriz was awarded
for “their thorough re-thinking and detailed investigation of the word, voice and sound in relation to
embodiment. The piece achieved a personal identity by engaging in the on going questioning of the
choreography through creative and physical labour; while at the same time opening up a poetic space of
thoughts, feelings and, as the two performers enacted a very intimate discovery.”
ATUAL/EXPRESSO
Um gesto que não passa de uma ameaça by Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz, Espaço Alkantara, Lisboa,
between 24 and 26 by Cláudia Galhós – Nov 17, 2011
“For who thinks that there is no renovation in the Portuguese dance here are two names that prove the
contrary. Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz create and perform as a duo, they are out of the media but inside the
most prestigious international dance circuits. Recently they’ve won the Prix Jardin d’Europe under the
auspiciousness of the European Community with the show that they present again this week. “A gesture
that is nothing but a threat” is representative of the duo’s universe. There, each action, each sound, each
word installs with a formal and poetic accuracy of a carefully worked sculpture. There is humour, social
critic, evocation of the everyday life, intimate, repetitive. At the moment where everything seems to have
lost its sense, this piece reveals other possible senses behind that loss…as an act of freedom.”
ÍPSILON/PÚBLICO
The possibility of a gesture by Tiago Bartolomeu Costa – Nov 24, 2011
“When, a month ago, the choreographers Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz received the prize jardin d’Europe, in
Bucharest, Romania, with the piece A gesture that is nothing but a threat – from today till Friday at espaço
Alkantara, Lisbon – the jury of critics pointed out “their thorough re-thinking and detailed investigation of
the word, voice and sound in relation to embodiment”.
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The piece, that had its first presentation in July, at Centro Cultural de Belém, in Lisbon, “achieved a
personal identity by engaging in the on going questioning of the choreography through creative and
physical labour; while at the same time opening up a poetic space of thoughts, feelings and, as the two
performers enacted a very intimate discovery.”
This definition is symptomatic of the discourse from both choreographers that, with this distinction, arrive to
the first row of the newest European contemporary creation. And they do it being absolutely faithful to a
collected speech, distant from finite models and aware of a continuity at the same time narrative and
choreographic, that was not seen (or we haven’t seen) for a long time, in such a fearless way in the
contemporary dance. They do it, mainly, in a context where the pressure on the modes of production,
programming and circulation tend to restrain the very own creation, introducing condition variables on the
aesthetical and discursive points of view. That was visible in the Explore Dance Festival edition where the
piece from Dias and Roriz was presented, in Bucharest, and ended up winning against others that
revealed a long list of co-producers that were at the same time, sponsors of the prize.
A special case
When we inscribe them in the actual national choreographic landscape, Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz
represent a special case. The quality of their work, precise and intense in their research, owner of a gravity
in the movement and clear on the use of the body as a dramaturgic guide, can be read as a natural
heir/successor of an history that was always stronger in its singularity than in the establishment of schools
or aesthetical families. There is, in the way they’ve been drawing their path a conscious attention not only
to detail, but also to the selection (instead of reduction) of the gesture, this one amplifies itself through
another way of restructuring, far from catharsis, as well pointed out Luísa Roubaud in the critic published
in July in Público.
And A gesture that is nothing but a threat operates from principles of occultation and revelation that build
through the bodies of the two performers, games of words, movements and images. Games that, in their
narrative and discursive fluidity, allow the drawing of a lucid referential map, full of unusual encounters
between word and gesture, between image and its meaning, where it seems to be enough the poetics
from the act of enunciation.
It is this work with the word, the language (English) and the voice which anticipates the movement or
complements it, that characterizes the language of Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz. In the same way the
movements from one and from the other author complement each other, amplify and transform, in a
hypnotic gesture of mutation. Already in their previous works like Again from the beginning, from 2008, and
Unfolding, from 2009, they had defined that the choreographic material they are interested goes beyond
the dance and enters in dialogue, when not in confrontation, with the very own idea of a movement. Now
they reach a high peak of their path, before they start their new creation that results from the prize they’ve
now won.
Today the piece is preceded by one minute of silent in blackout in solidarity with the general strike and,
tomorrow, precedes the presentation of the book Arremesso II, an edition of images and ideas made in
collaboration with Catarina Dias and Cíntia Gil.”
ATUAL/EXPRESSO
Review of the year 2011 in Dance - 4th place from 10 by Cláudia Galhós - Dec 2011
“(…)It is from that mature and demanding balance between imagination and execution that the duo Sofia
Dias and Vítor Roriz stands out with A gesture that is nothing but a threat. (…) these are pieces that do not
close in themselves, but open a life that multiply perspectives, thoughts, questions…And have soul. (…)”.
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ÍPSILON/PÚBLICO
Review of the year 2011 in Dance - 4th place from 10 by Tiago Bartolomeu Costa - dez 2011
“With an attention and elegance at all proof, an unquestionable knowledge and awareness and a huge
fragility, Sofia Dias & Vítor Roriz conquered Europe with this piece of such a disarming complexity. It’s not
only the obsessed and laborious way they work an image. It’s also the way they depart from it, to, in a vast
gesture, make the whole world fit in it. One of the biggest cases of European dance. In portuguese.”
LONDON DANCE REVIEW
Sofia Dias & Vítor Roriz/Spring Loaded at The Place by Jeffrey Gordon Baker – Apr 23, 2012
“Questions of form and content are never far from consideration in the practice of contemporary dance. In
a post-show Q&A after Friday’s Spring Loaded programme at The Place, these questions were well
articulated by choreographer-performers Sofia Dias and Vitor Roriz, whose piece A Gesture that is Nothing
but a Threat occupied the first half of the evening. Roriz and Dias explained that this hypnotic work of rapid
verbal and physical repetitions, was born of play, in resistance to the notion that thematics have to come
first in the creation of dances. Indeed, this playful spirit infused the work, in which the pair started by sitting
across a table from each other repeating words and phrases until they fell apart into mere monotonous
sounds, then evolving into new words, new phrases, often to serendipitous effect.
The same happened with the movement. Fragments of what could have been household rituals or
mysterious crime scene re-enactments were rewound and fast-forwarded with minor changes appearing
within each new cycle. The device here could have made these feel like simple improvisation exercises,
but Roriz and Dias are distinctive and compelling physical performers. They were able to mine the
monotony in both the movement and the voice for subtle variations, humour, even tenderness. A pause for
breath, a conspiratorial whisper or a wry look would bring us sharply back into the reality of the moment
just before we were vibrated back into the mesmerising soundscape of their vocalisations. This was a
fascinating work, deceptively simple in structure, a virtuoso illustration of how we simultaneously discover
and create the present through the incessant repetition of the past.”
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DE DODO - SPRINGDANCE'S INDEPENDENT ONLINE NEWSPAPER
Portuguese Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz let the language speak their movements by Maarten
Baanders – Apr 25, 2012
“You have those performances that you think are remarkably simple and where you understated a
complete world of its own. Performances in which everything is recognizable. Words, movement, scenery.
Everything as familiar and homely. But then a knock on data. Patterns merge. The language is uncertain.
Everything rattles and touches adrift. And yet it is true. For your eyes and ears takes place on a world
without cracks and with its own logic. In one way or another, afterwards, you leave the room with a good
feeling.
Such a performance is ‘A gesture is nothing but a threat’. Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz move and let the
language speak their movements. Same rhythm, same speed includes their words and their gestures.
They build a great stress on them.
In their performance-like work, like ‘Again from the beginning’, Dias and Roriz breakthrough prevailing
codes and images, to build a new context. In 'O mesmo mas ligeiramente diferente’ let them see what
wonderful roads movement among language lie.
In 'A gesture is nothing but a threat' Dias and Roriz do something wonderful with words. They thread them
together. They make associations, not only with what the words mean, but with their sound. "Open your
eyes," they invite the public. The words flow out. "I hope you rise," results from it, and then: 'You're right'.
And so it goes. Again and again they bring such beautiful poetic flow going. Words are not defined parts
with a fixed meaning. It is as remarkable as creative the way these two Portuguese handle with English. Or
can they just do it because they are not native speakers? Are they more capable with the English words
and their meanings, which parts are probably better to separate and breack through? Quite naturally, they
surprise you in taking you from one language to another. The sound determines the twisting. Of course,
the words never loose their meanings. That’s why the word series in this show are so funny. Rapidly
tapping Dias and Roriz and many meanings, without time to consider them. The meaning as flies away.
This gives you a giddy feeling, like you’re in great speed through the swept universe.
In their movements they do the same, but it’s more gradual and subtle. The beginning is quite normal.: A
man and a woman at a table. From that position they build a series of movements, repeated, each
supplemented by a subsequent movement. Get up, pick up a map, water drinking: nothing special, it
seems. But in an airy way they gradually go beyond the walls of normal. Furniture goes on their side.
Dramatic gestures and facial expressions break out. All this smoothly and with a compelling rhythm.
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Slowly, the domesticity place for a splendid absurdity. Still very simple and clear. It is liberating. You leave
the room with such a good feeling.”
THE VOLSKRANT (Jornal Nacional) by Mirjam van der Linden - 26 abr2012
Springdance | Sofia Dias & Vítor Roriz
"Springdance festival has always been on the border of dance and performance art, dance and theater,
and the performances presented on Tuesday were a perfect example of this. (...)
Dance in its strict sense was scarce in the evenings. In 'A Gesture That is Nothing But a Threat' words go
off with the bodies of Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz, the dancers and choreographers of the piece. With a
diction to blow you away, they pour a cascade of letters, sounds and accents from their mouth in a rapid
repetition where other meanings merge.
(...) In a very clever way, this frenetic relationship drama, if that’s the case, cause you don’t really know
what exactly is that play between man and woman (…). If at a given time the movement takes over, you
literally see that it is the purely physical network such as the nuances they’ve done in language. (…)"
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