Weaving Chaos ENG.pages

"...Everything I do emerges from the depths of my being, and yet it has
the ability to reach the other. That's what I appreciate more and more,
that binds me to artistic creation: a sharing of feelings that lead us to
thoughts kept and silenced..."
www.taniacarvalho.org
Weaving Chaos
(2014)
“…la chorégraphe portugaise Tânia Carvalho, qui a fait du voyage d’Ulysse
un tableau vivant, picturalement chargé de références, joliment agencées et
emportées dans les flots d’une danse parfaitement maîtrisés.”
MARIE-CHRISTINE VERNAY, Libération
www.taniacarvalho.org
Video
broad view: https://vimeo.com/121337759
zoomed and angled: http://vimeo.com/110577877
Password | taniataniatania
Credits
Choreography | Tânia Carvalho
Dancers | Antón Skrzypiciel, Allan Falieri, André Santos, Bruno Senune, Catarina Felix, Cláudio
Vieira, Gonçalo Ferreira de Almeida, Leonor Hipólito, Luiz Antunes, Luís Guerra, Maria João
Rodrigues e Petra Van Gompel.
Music | Ulrich Estreich
Costumes | Aleksandar Protic
Light Design | Zeca Iglésias
Light Scenography and Promotional Photography | Jorge Santos
Photography | Margarida Dias
Production | João Guimarães for Tânia Carvalho
Production (until dez 14) | Sofia Matos/Bomba Suicida
www.taniacarvalho.org
Coproduction
Les Subsistances (Lyon), Biennal de la Danse de Lyon (Lyon), Thèâtre de la Ville com Les Spectacles
vivants - Centre Pompidou (Paris), Maria Matos Teatro Municipal (Lisboa), Centro Cultural Vila
Flor (Guimarães), O Espaço do Tempo (Montemor-O-Novo), Teatro Viriato (Viseu) .
Artistic Residence
Les Subsistances (FR); O Espaço do Tempo; Materiais Diversos / Centro Cultural do Cartaxo (PT);
Hellerau – European Center for the Arts Dresden, (DE);
Support
Direção Geral das Artes / Governo de Portugal; Rede Cinco Sentidos, O Espaço do Tempo e
Alkantara (Portugal)
Past Shows
2014
19 to 22 September - Angar Sâonne, Les Subsistances - Biennal de la Danse de Lyon, (FR)
24 to 26 September - Centre Pompidou, Théâtre de la Ville / Les Spectacles vivants - Centre
Pompidou, (FR)
2015
14 February - Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Festival Guidance, Guimarães (PT)
19 February - Teatro Académico Gil Vicente, Coimbra (PT)
20 and 21 February - Maria Matos Teatro Municipal, Lisboa (PT)
www.taniacarvalho.org
Weaving Chaos
(2014)
The body of Homer’s Odyssey, viewed as the monumental object that has come to represent
some of the fundamental laws of epic poetry, is that of an unending path of return that leads to a
reunion, and eventually to a distinctive sort of deliverance for its hero. Its written form addresses the
fusion of an unflinching belief and the obstacles that it is faced with, of a confident hope and the
pain of anguished yearning for the final unity. Its moving form, in contrast, wants to translate this
intimacy of willfulness and constant striving into an abyss that is forced to become a living chaos.
The mere intent to transpose such a thing as the Odyssey into the territory of dance is by
itself an ordeal and a wandering of its own kind, inasmuch as it implies the mixture and the
merging of all figures that comprise it – and therefore makes clear the need not so much of its
assimilation or adaptation, but of its outright transfiguration. This is why there can be no
reassurance, but only risk and peril, no apparent development, but only the overlapping of disorder
and inner commotion.
These are the principles of composition: a raw but unwavering infidelity to Homer’s text,
and the invocation of its most obscure realm, redefining it in its own terms while at the same time
attempting to respond instinctively to the demands of dance and movement. For this reason, there
is neither progression nor mediation, and the method won’t be narrative or successive, but
discontinuous and oblique: the conjunction of synchronicity and wavering of the two surfaces has
to bring forth the ceaseless – but not unbreakable or numb – retraction and unfolding of the figures
on stage. A given group of dancers will incorporate and give life to a single individual character,
whereas each character will constantly morph into a mass of many dancers.
Penelope’s personification is one of lament and longing that gives in to the desolation of
tears, but it is no less sustained by her artful weaving of the mantle, done by day and undone by
night. Similarly, Ulysses’ vision of homecoming is perfectly symmetrical to his cunning, as he
contrives a plan that allows him to escape all dangers and defeat his opponents. They both are
weavers, thorn between suffering and action. The painful sense of expectancy that binds them
together is represented by the two extremes they both bring to light in bare flesh. The lively shadow
of weariness and exhaustion increases the desire, instead of weakening it, and the intensity of desire
turns the exhausted body into obstinacy and perseverance.
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Every sensation of tenacity and unyielding persistency will then appear to be transfixed into
the dancer’s concrete movements, within a circumscribed space. They fall to the ground to instantly
rise, fail and try again from the start, drawing in and immediately expanding to the front, receding
only to again come forth, incessantly, on and on – insisting, unrelenting and headstrong.
This movement is the quicksand of the Odyssey, its exulting leap and its staring silence. As
it stirs and shakes off its perception of itself, it is left with the insight of its representation left in
pieces, again and again lifted and shattered by the unrest in which it continues to exist, through the
arms and legs, through the head and the torso of the dancers, and thereby becomes inevitably
discentered, ex-centric in the literal sense. Their bodily rapture increases to the point of tumult and
folly, until it again dissolves and yields to its own disappearance. It is the pure reciprocity of
outburst and stillness. Such is the bewildering and spellbinding conscience of dancing, even as it
seeks to evade its godly ways: it is still pursuing, as it is said somewhere in the Odyssey, the act of
beating the holy ground with one’s own sparkling feet – but now turned inside out and made to be
outside of itself.
Bruno Duarte
www.taniacarvalho.org