Based in Arnhem, Netherlands, INTRODANS choreographer Adriaan Luteijn, who has been working on inclusive activities to create dance with people with disabilities and the elderly, and LAND FES artistic director Dai Matsuoka, who has been promoting similar activities in Japan, Dutch and Japanese dancers will collaborate across borders to create a multi-generational integrated dance work called “UNUM.”
November 8th – 10th, 2024 National Performing Arts Center, Taipei November 15th – 16th, 2024 Rohm Theatre Kyoto, Kyoto November 20th, 2024 The Museum of Art Kochi, Kochi December 10th, 2024 Theater im Pfalzbau, Ludwigshafen December 18th – 19th, 2024 Auditorio de Tenerife, Santa Cruz de Tenerife January 25th, 2025 Teatro Municipal da Covilhã, Covilhã February 1st – 2nd, 2025 Sadler’s Well, London February 7th – 9th, 2025 Perth Festival, Perth February 26th – 27th, 2025 Le Quartz, Brest March 4th, 2025 Les Quinconces et L’Espal, Le Mans March 6th – 7th, 2025 CCN de Caen, Caen March 10th – 11th, 2025 Théâtre de Cornouaille, Quimper March 14th, 2025 Cndc Angers, Angers March 28th – 29th, 2025 Tanzmainz Festival, Mainz April 2nd – 4th, 2025 La Comédie de Clermont, Clermont-Ferrand April 8th, 2025 Théâtre de Nîmes, Nîmes April 15th, 2025 Espaces Pluriels, Pau April 30th – May 3rd, 2025 Danse Danse, Montreal May 16th, 2025 Theatro Circo, Braga July 8th – 9th, 2025 Colours International Dance Festival, Stuttgart 75 minutes
Collective identities are sources of belonging and inclusion but when they become mainstream, they can turn the other way around. I can recognise this issue in dance.
In CARCAÇA, ten dancers including Marco da Silva Ferreira and two musicians form an unconventional and joyful corps de ballet. The dancers perform intricate footwork merging folk dances with contemporary urban dance styles from groups such as LGBTQIA+ and communities from ex-colonies. In this choreography, Marco da Silva Ferreira uses dance to investigate communities, the construction of collective identity, memory and cultural crystallization. In other words: what if folk dances had not crystallized, had continued to redefine themselves and had incorporated the present at every moment?
The cast explores their collective identity in a physical, intuitive and unpretentious flow of the body, dance and cultural construction. They start from familiar footwork: clubbing, balls, cypher battles and the studio; they use the physical vocabulary of the contemporary, social, urban context as a lexicon of identity (house, kuduro, Top Rock, hardStyle, etc.). Through a slow construction process they connect these styles with the heritage and memory of dances from the past. These folk dances have remained stagnant without integrating new definitions of bodies, groups and communities, which were considered inferior. For these groups it was necessary to break with the authoritarian, totalitarian and paternalistic past.
In CARCAÇA an exercise is proposed that integrates the past and the present. The performance makes you think: How do you decide what to forget and what to remember? What is the role of individual identities in the construction of a community? What is the driving force of an identity? What world does the individual and collective body traverse? Or, better put, what bodies traverse the world?
October 12th – 13th, 2024 Kyoto Arts Theater Shunjuza, Kyoto October 19th – 20th, 2024 Saitama Arts Theater, Saitama November 7th – 9th, 2024 Le CENTQUATRE, Paris November 12th – 13th, 2024 Bonlieu scène nationale, Annecy November 23rd, 2024 Domaine de Bayssan, Béziers November 26th – 27th, 2024 Scène Nationale d’ALBI-Tarn, Albi 60 minutes
Wearing short-sleeved shirts and denim pants, and barefoot, eight men appear on a dimly lit stage and begin dancing in silent unison. Soon, two drummers join them. The dancers synchronize in pairs or groups, and then suddenly become one person who has left the group. The joining and dispersing, repetition and development are dizzyingly but tightly constructed, leaving no time to take your eyes off them. And even in the neat composition, their bodies are bubbling and heating up, and excitement is pulsating.
Christian Rizzo is a multi-talented leader in the European art scene, with a wide range of fields including not only performing arts but also visual arts, music, and fashion. The origins of this work, which premiered at the Avignon Theater Festival in 2013, date back to about 10 years earlier, when Rizzo witnessed a dance performed by male dancers in Istanbul and was deeply impressed by it. One dance inspires the birth of another dance over time. We witness a moment in the unbroken dance activity.
