Touch it, Dansmakers in Brazil: a report

Touch it is a cultural exchange project between Dansmakers from Amsterdam and NúCleo de DirCeu de Teresina (BR). The project got support by Central de Cultura. Below you can read a report on the experience.

This process opened up a new way to work together and on subjects which I’ve never experienced before. A way full of creativity and also full of different interpretations. I don't feel that this piece belongs to me. Everything that was said to me during the time working in Brazil worked subconsciously and beyond my control, and probably is all there now, visible or invisible on stage: Tropicalism, Rousseau, feminism, colonialism, Foucault, Swingeira, Candomblé and Taranta, family troubles, social troubles, role of women in societies, sex and sensuality, colours, plastic, children, religion and meanings of religious icons, white elephants, art and politics and of course music. Every symbol calls another one and builds relationships. Sometimes you get a whole picture, meaningful and complex. Sometimes every logical meaning disappears and you are left with fragments of sensations and unsolved questions.

Imagine a night with a bright moon, 37 degrees, the Gioconda floating into the water of a swimming pool; nothing moves except for a few leaves of the trees around the pool. The red is bright, just like the green. Many different songs and other sounds cross the air, bats fly so fast that you can't see them clearly. A voice reads lines which regards the massacre of the indigenous by the

first colonialists who arrived in Brazil. The face who reads the lines is a male face, dark skinned, with sharp blue and pink eye shadow. A bit of lipstick. Serious and still, smiling.

Life and art are every second getting closer.

This is what I see, what I experience and would like to share it with you.

Gabriella Maiorino

Number of people involved in the project: 17 in the creation of Touch it! And 16 participants in the workshop in August.

Name: Touch It!

When: August – October 2011. Tour & workshops in 2012 (dates not confirmed yet)

Where: Teresina, Brazil & Amsterdam, NL

Who:  Dansmakers Amsterdam in collaboration with Núcleo do DirCeu

Credits:

Choreography: Gabriella Maiorino

Dance/live music: Kayo Arruda, Layo Bulhão, Valentina Campora, César Costa and Juliana França

Light design: Mike van de Lagemaat

Original Music: Simone Giacomini

Decor: Giovanni Cavalcoli

Gioconda: Mavi Veloso / Rianne Blekkenhorst

Dramaturgical advice: Suzy Blok, Marcelo Evelin, Mavi Veloso, Federico Bonelli

Production assistance NL: Carolina Parreira/Dansmakers Amsterdam

Technical assistance/Dansmakers Amsterdam: Peter Castelijn

Supported by: Central de Cultura / Fonds Podiumkunsten, Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, Dansmakers Amsterdam & Nucleo Do Dirceu.

Description: Touch it! is the result of the collaboration between the artist collective Núcleo do DirCeu, Teresina, Brazil and the dance production house Dansmakers Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

As a choreographer I have been invited to create a piece, with four components of the Brazilian group and artists in residence in the Netherlands.

What we want to present to you is, more than a dance or theatre piece, an intense human and artistic meeting. It involves an enormous amount of "contaminating" elements in which different cultures, experiences, approaches to the body and dance, and very different individuals cooperated towards an articulated performative act. This meeting is based on a rich process of finding and getting to know each other in a NON-neutral place.

Idea of exchange: An artistic exchange between the choreographer Gabriella Maiorino, based in Amsterdam and artists working at Núcleo Do Dirceu, in Teresina Brazil. The project began in Teresina in August 2011. The group worked there the entire month of September and then went to Amsterdam to work another three weeks in October and perform in Melkweg theatre during the Brasil Festival Amsterdam. In 2012 the group will perform and teach workshops in Brazil. The idea is to share and exchange artistic experiences with colleagues from different cultures, social, economic and geographic  backgrounds by collaborating in a creative process, performing, teaching and in this way sharing with each other as artists as well as with the audience, both in Amsterdam as in Brazil.