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Catol, first of all I would like to ask you what pronouns I can call you by and where you stand regarding your identities. What description do you give of yourself?
As I’m going to be talking in English, we will use the pronouns they/them.
Often when there is a change of the spoken language a question comes with, as different idioms are dealing very differently with these matters. Then, for example in Italian, French, Portuguese, I propose that we exercise the non-binary possibilities. My relation to it is a continuous practice of hacking, escaping or deviating the identity somehow. So the pronouns would be a way of treating myself and who I am.
It’s also an invitation to the many nuances of what it means: gender assignments, their specific characteristics, various subjectivities, cultural lineages and so on.
There is a large spectrum, full of nuances. Between the binaries there is so much happening. I position myself as someone that is in transition, and I don’t know exactly where this transition is going to bring me. I expose myself in transition while simultaneously asking what does that mean or what it could be.
It’s not fixed, it’s a journey.
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How did this affect the creation of zona de derrama, which you presented at Santarcangelo Festival 2024, starting with the choice of the people on stage with you?
zona de derrama is formed between me, Auguste and Luara, and Luisa who created the soundscape. We are people that have different positionalities, and that experience the world with curiosity to unlearn and to learn together what this does in our living. Somehow it can get complex, but it’s also very simple. We experience the world through the body that we carry, right? We come “into form” and navigate life with it, with all the changes that traverse us through time… with our daily lives, our ways of living. For me it’s impossible to imagine that this would be just an influence, because I don’t think we can dissociate. We try to study in the body how these experiences and memories are taking form… we search to dance with it all. That would be a practice. We are also people that have a strong relation to pleasure and joy.
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How did the creation take place materially? What principles governed the production, selection, and assembly of materials?
The creation happens while being in the studio together, while hanging out and for me at more lonely times to write down “guidance words” that frame some of our movement practices and investigations. We spent 3 weeks living together in Nyon (CH) at the far° Festival 2023 to create this first chapter of the work. This informs a lot how material comes to be composed.
In general, “zona” is a principle of dealing with this idea that dance is something you cannot capture. For me it always starts with an image. An image that brings a sensorial aspect with it: in zona de derrama we imagine an area where overflowings are announced and happening. It’s a calling for a change. We perceive that there is something about to happen around us and that we will need to negotiate with.
Shifting is another of the principles we deal with. Then, the word “derrama” (overflowing) relates more with the erotics of transpassing, containers overflowing, making things wet.. At the same time, it’s this image of a container that overflows itself. It’s a process of transformation and change.
We hang out a lot together, and these moments allow us to talk and tell stories in different ways than in the working studio. These moments allow personal-transpersonal processes to appear. I’m fascinated by the negotiation that we do in between intimate and public when performing.
zona de derrama is your first group choreography. What attention did it required and what surprises did it bring, composing with and for other bodies?
A lot of listening and trust. To guide a choreography there is something very special to search to be listening to. Listen to what is there in the room, what could be the curiosity about the people that are meeting, the stories we bring with us. And to trust that the process is going to teach us something and that it’s going to take a form.
There is a lot of trust and I think this trust reciprocates between me, Luar, Auguste. I think all of us involved in this project, as in its continuation (arrebentaçao – zona de derrama last chapter) are willing to be together and to also process things together through the body. There is something very simple about it, and a lot of trust and listening. Listening to the desires, listening to the projections, expectations, listening to the space, to the energies and to trust that everything is already there. I think there is a lot of admiration and love that guides how we come together.
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At Santarcangelo Festival you presented your two previous works, two solos, la peau entre les doigts in 2022 and Clashes Licking in 2023. For those who haven’t seen them, how would you summarize the points of contact and difference between the two?
The previous works, aesthetically, I would say are very different. But all the pieces have something very similar in the process.
I often write a lot of words that create a certain map of images and poetry that would guide the creation. But they all have a different visual or a different aesthetic manifestation. In one solo I move between people. In the other solo I have a frontal relation to the audience. And the first chapter of zona de derrama it’s a piece for outdoor spaces.
They have very different manifestations.
They all have a repeated fascination with a quite “physical” way of dancing, till now they are very sweaty works.
I’m always concerned and working through referring to the body as a complex of the spiritual, the physical and the cultural inseparability of it. Which manifest the falsehoods of body-mind division that was created to make the modern/colonial-capitalist society to develop on the basis of separability.
I’m not concerned about how it’s going to look like when I am in the creation of it. But I’m very inspired by the feeling of dancing, moving in space. There is always something about dislocation when I make choreographic decisions.
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How does the audience influence your creations, both in design and in staging and execution?
I often dance in the studio already imagining that there is somebody watching me. It’s a practice I often do. I enjoy playing with the idea that someone is there, sometimes someone that has already died, or a friend, or a lover, or someone I have never met. This brings a lot of information for the moments to frame the choreography. simultaneously; there is always a lot of vulnerability. I’m interested in addressing some performance gestures to people that are present, but also to people that are absent. The relation to the audience carries some secret on the way I engage with performing. There is a kind of magic in performing live, a lot of things escape, a lot remains in a secret realm.
We deal every time with who comes to watch art and performances.
While performing we watch each other in a certain way, between the audience and us, some kind of “othering” plays around. I try to find moments to watch who is watching me in the choreographies.
Your works actually opened the last three editions of Santarcangelo Festival, as if to present a “summary” of what would then be offered for viewing in the days to follow. How does zona de derrama resonate with the title-theme of the 2024 edition while we are here, as you see it?
I perceive the title of the festival of this year, while we were here, as something that is dealing with a sort of urgency, at the same time dealing with a certain hope hidden somewhere: it’s “still” while we are here. We are attempting to do something. And I think I’m dealing with that a lot in the way I work. There is always a sense of urgency or a sense of struggle, but also a big attempt and a big concern with hoping, with the challenge of how we could imagine living through different dreams.
How could we have a memory of a future where we can actually be?
Or, yeah, keep doing and searching for it.
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In conclusion, a curiosity about how encounters happen in the international contemporary scene: when and where did Santarcangelo Festival artistic director Tomasz Kireńczuk learn about your work?
I met Tomasz for the first time in Geneva, at the Grütli Theater under the direction of Barbara Giongo and Nataly Sugnaux. They invited me to present the work la peau entre les doigts at the Go! Go! Go! Festival of 2022. That was the first time I was sharing a creation of mine in an institution. I had always worked as an interpreter in Brazil. It represented a big shift on my journey, considering that it made me decide to stay in Europe and to not to go back to Brazil. I had just finished my studies and I didn’t know exactly if I should try to stay in Switzerland or Europe, if there would be work happening for me that would make it possible to imagine that.
Me and Tomasz had a cafe together in Geneva after he watched my performance. It was his first year directing Santarcangelo Festival, and we had a nice exchange. The first time I was at the festival I was quite fresh for the European context. It was a very important moment for me. After this first experience, I had the pleasure to come back the two following years. It’s very important to imagine that we, as artists, can be followed in longer terms by institutions. The pieces are normally a part of a huge journey, that sometimes are very exposing, vulnerable. At the same time, we deal with the art market and with the needs that working in capitalist society brings.
I feel very lucky to have been invited to show different works there at the Festival. It is still rare, but very important that we can have more places of conversations with institutions and festivals and people that work with programming. That we can try not only to think about the “piece product”, but that we are also part of a process that has very different formats and very peculiar moments and that it’s a life project, right?
Like the development of collaborations and artistic language it’s something that it’s not solved by one piece and it’s also not something that can be summarized just with a project.
It’s very precious to be able to go back places.
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