Não há amor como o primeiro / There is no love like the first
Presentation at Tatwerk, Berlin, 2012.*
This is a piece around some postures of the classical dance as it comes to today. “Posture” comes from the Latin word “positura”, which means, among other things – “fatigue, work to settle down, disposition, body placement, body attitude, order”- which brings us to the stances of rest, stability or immobility; all terms pertained to an extreme violence to dance, and that takes place mostly in analytical approaches in this area.
Nevertheless, there is something of the domain of fixity normally implied in dance in its process of actualisation, and that is much related to the type of motion created in the relationship of these dynamic drawings of the body and the disposal of the viewer`s gaze. And that, in the case of the classical dance, appears to involve in a very peculiar game where “thing tried” and the “thing seen” are always mediated by a kind of ideal to always chase and never meet. Therefore, it appears that the “military procession” as Nietzsche says, is always the target of a confusing desire in this particular type of dance; something’s always present.
In here, what happens is a journey through some of these figures, where passage and drawing mix through a combined rhythm between body movements and light flashes.
There goes the ideal. The referent remains.
And ultimately, the referent of the referent, which becomes dull with its tendency for the dissimulation and that could look to be first, but is not.
Não(,) há amor(.) como( –) o primeiro - Text by Elisabete Marques (2010)
Creation, Performance: Vera Sofia Mota Duration: 30m Residency/Support: Atelier RE.AL (Lisbon), Chão de Oliva (Sintra), Bomba Suicida (Lisbon), Fábrica do Braço de Prata (Lisbon), CPAI – Clube Português de Artes e Ideias (Lisbon), Tatwerk Berlin/MPA, Altes Finanzamt (Berlin) Presentations: Chão de Oliva (Sintra, 2009) Danço Festival, Teatro Sá da Bandeira (Porto), Fábrica do Braço de Prata (Lisbon), Quinta do Sobralinho (Vila Franca de Xira), Tatwerk - MPA (Berlin, 2012) Coaching: João Fiadeiro* Year: 2009 (*In the residencies carried out at Atelier RE.AL and Chão de Oliva / Four Seasons Festival – Winter Season).
*Video Stills: Vera Sofia Mota. Video: Paulo Chinatown Matosinhos. Presentation at Tatwerk, Berlin, 2012.