Salivating knots generating foams is a performance that is born from my research on Afrotranstopia, a space of conviviality and creation that is built around the intersection between life technologies, existences and afrotranscendences. Afrotranstopian technology does not only mean technical or digital resources - means that we also use in the creation process. In Afrotranstopia, technology is thought of as mobilisation and activation of knowledge, ways of life (existences) and of matriarchal, ancestral, indigenous and Afrodiasporic forms of resistance. Afrotranscendence is the multiple strategies for staying alive, even when it seems impossible. Afrotranscendence is not survival: it is living, existing and creating futures. Reactivating these technologies means building spaces of training and sharing that support the manifestation and dissemination of these technologies, but also spaces of creation, speculation and overcoming. In this performance we will experience Afrotranstopia in the body on stage. Our first activation is to train the salivating knots of our bodies. From this, we will try collectively to produce a wave of sound and gravitational resonance against the tsunami that threatens life. After the tsunami, what remains are regenerating foams that pave the way for reconstruction.  

Salivating        knots              generating               foams: 

                    the         of the body       post tsunami

emerges from the concept of Afrotranstopia by Brazilian choreographer and performer Mário Lopes. The performance is the third and last part of the trilogy “Movimento” and consolidates his study on forms of resistance, celebration and healing initiated in Movimento I_Parado é Suspeito and Movimento II_Kodex_Konflikt. Through multidirectional and territorial actions, Lopes opens up space for the creation and invention of futures, based on the preservation of life technologies developed by the peoples of the African diaspora on both sides of the Atlantic.

The performance works with a notion of choreography understood as a spatial bridging of great distances, whether they are physical or cybernetic. In this path, the existences that Afrotranstopia connects or, in Lope’s words, activates and intersects, are born from the urgency of dealing with the traumas experienced by these communities historically affected by the syndemic virus PACACO-bi (patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism - within a binary structure). In resistance to it, Afrotranstopia creates its own network of artistic and conceptual research, based on the preservation of Afrodiasporic technologies of life. Each performer is an active voice that articulates a great conversation and establishes a space of exchange and accumulation of knowledge and practices. The encounter between them promotes a ritual of dissolution and salivation of the knots of the body and an active relaxation that prepares the body for the tsunami that threatens life.

Salivating        knots              generating               foams: 

                    the         of the body       post tsunami

continues, on stage, an action already started in 2020, with the film "Movimento III_Celebration: Post Tsunami Foams". Produced in the context of the pandemic, where the norms of confinement and movement control prevented encounters, the film was shot in three different places, connecting artists from different parts of the African diaspora in Finland, Brazil and Mozambique. In this new hybrid work, which relates performance and cinematography, cathartic movements and vibrational states are explored that alternate between contrasting and reconciling with the fluidity of salivation.

The vestiges of the traversals and encounters generated so far are projected and actualised on stage, expressing the sinuous, sometimes chaotic nature of their contours. The traces gestating in these actions emanate a neon light that burns the eyes, agitates and swallows us up in a great magnetic, energising, resonant wave. Their transverse routes, starting and heading south, destabilise us in a powerful turbulence. After the tsunami, what remains are regenerating foams that pave the way for reconstruction.

Articulation and Choreography: Mario Lopes Performance: Amie Jammeh, Candelaria Fernández, Dandara Modesto, Kalil Joigny, Mario Lopes, Priscila Hilário, Rafa Barreto and Victor Pardinho Soundtrack and Composition: Rafa Barreto Video Mapping and VJ: Victor Pardinho Dramaturgy: Luisa Barreto Producer: Flavia Pinheiro Physical Preparation: Andrea Arobba Light Designer: Bouba Dola Sound Technician: Juli Sound Consultant: Geert Odens Costume Designers: Iah Bahia and ACRE_ Cassio Bonfim External Advisors: Flavia Pinheiro and Léo Custódio Video Recording: Patrícia Black

Disclaimer: audience will be documented (video).

Synthetic sapphire lenses and/or/are/our eyes: contacting, capturing, caressing bodies and selves in proximity. (Un)seeing eyeballs and smartphones as “technological prostheses” prompts new dimensionality for flesh and (virtual) enmeshment. Representations pulsate and scan through embodiment with satellitic signal. Which spacetime emerges from recoding the “I” in transindividual? Proposed is a technogenetic matrix for rehearsing a ceremonial articulation of this inquiry.

Zander’s present research questions have evolved from past, core inquiries about internet expressions (onlineness) and person-device (cyborg) relationality. In 3M0T1NG, Zander works with dancing collaborators within a human-body(-[trans]individual) equation in which imaging devices and web semiotics backdrop vocabularies for emo-techno-social soma. The research speculates about simulations of eye-contact and (non-)complex images, disconnecting essentialized “truths” from feelings and expressions. Rendered are psychic dissociations from normative emotionality, re-manifesting (or “queering”) inter-relational communications in “real” (hallucinatory) and virtual (computed) time.

This [4-player] process-iteration of 3M0T1NG succeeds its [2-player] performance-test with Charlie Laban Trier, hosted by Y Events at Divadlo X10 (Prague). Support for its research begins with DAS Choreography and continues via the Saison Foundation (Tokyo), SACi-E / National Institute for Space Research (São José dos Campos), IDlab – Academie voor Theater en Dans (Amsterdam), and Fonds Darstellende Künste (Berlin). [6-player] 3M0T1NG premieres at Uferstudios (Berlin) in 2022 with additional presences Raoni Muzho Saleh, Charlie Laban Trier, and Simone Gisela Weber, supported by NPN-STEPPING OUT (Munich).

For technical prowess, residency & production support, intellectual attention, and generous advices, additional thanks are extended towards: Walter Abrahão dos Santos, Udo Akemann, Fabiane Morais Borges, Marco Antonio Chamon, Alice Chauchat, Anna Chrtková, Juan Pablo Cámara, Laura Cull, Petr Dlouhý, Jeroen Fabius, Forough Fami, Konstantina Georgelou, Amparo González Sola, Harco Haagsma, Tiana Hemlock-Yensen, Atsuko Hisano, Taro Inamura, HeJin Jang, Mami Kang, Velvet Leigh, Erik Lint, Mario Lopes, Alexa Solveig Mardon, Nanako Matsumoto, Anderson Nascimento Gonçalves, Pijin Neji, Flávia Pinheiro, Maciej Sado, Bram Snijders, Paulo Augusto Sobral Escada, Chisato Sone, Rin Suemitsu, Pat Toh, Karol Tymiński, Willem Weemhoff, & Yang Zhen.

[4-player] 3M0T1NG [process], 2022. Performance with Isis Andreatta, Ahmed El Gendy, & Jakob Wittkowsky. Music by Li Yilei. Costume design by Dynno Dada. Technologies via IDlab (AHK). Outside eye through Elisa Zuppini. Mentorship with Erin Manning.

Melting Eyes is the current performative state of my research about bodies as landscapes. Inspired by more- than- human perspectives, Melting Eyes explores physical and sonic ways of engaging with and moving through space. Oscillating between distance and intimacy, a constant shifting body is looking for different ways to see. 

Research team
Performance, Choreography: Simone Gisela Weber Sound Design: Henri Nikkilä Outside Eye/Performer: Vilja Mihalovsky Mentor: Jee-Ae Lim Artistic Support and Advice: My DAS peers, Alejandro Salas Strus, Konstantina Georgelou, Alice Chauchat, Jeroen Fabius, Velvet Leigh, Tiana Hemlock, Emmy and Elioa Steffen Technical Support: Harco Haagsma, Udo Akemann 

Thanks to Young Art Support Amsterdam (NL), DAS Choreography AHK (NL), Fonds Darstellende Künste (GER) and thanks to all the DAS staff.

"with each dive / the more subaquatic I become /

 my ears, seashells / the ribs, gills. we're becoming fish / and we are many."

“Bag Abyss” is an attempt to materialize a recurring bad dream. It is about moving with the indiscernibility, the incongruity, the excesses and the trembling in order to insist on life and health as continuity and not as progress. A non-binary idea of health and care. 

It’s a solo dance work that has as a startpoint the question about how to sustain an embodiment of a personal artistic-clinical experience of caring and being cared for in the encounter with madness, taking as a premise to consider care as a performative experience of imagination, sensing and vulnerability. 

How to embody the notion of taking care as something that is both an activation and a cessation of a certain "inner trembling"? 

From this question, the work engages a certain quality of ‘vitality’ and ‘haunt, considering the movement as a psychophysical presence of regeneration, disorientation and as a necessarily dangerous and immersive experience.

“Bag Abyss” is an invitation to inhabit together a space of delirium as a possible shared fantasy, as well as to pay attention to the urgency of multiplying improbable forces of vitality beyond the hegemonic norm as the only perspective for a mentally healthy sociability. 

CREDITS

ISIS ANDREATTA | concept, performance and choreography - CAROLINA MENDONÇA | mentorship and dramaturgical collaboration - LUISA PUTERMAN | sound design - INÊS TERRA | voice performativity collaboration - RAFA BARRETO | sound operation - RENAN MARCONDES | conceptual dialogue - GRUPO VÃO by PATRÍCIA ÁRABE,  JULIA VIANA and JULIANA MELHADO | choreographic collaboration - ISI GONÇALVES | costume consulting and shared practice in embroidery - ANA DUPAS, RAFAEL COSTA and FERNANDO RAMOS | artistic-clinical theoretical studies - JEROEN FABIUS | tutor First Year DAS Choreography - SUPPORT | DAS Choreography AHK (NL); Holland Scholarship (NL); Young Art Support Amsterdam (NL); KaaiStudio (Brussels); CRD - Center of Reference for Dance of the city of São Paulo  (BR); Fórum Dança, Espaço Alkantara and Espaço do Tempo (PT). 

SPECIAL THANKS to my colleagues Mário Lopes, Simone Weber, Zander Porter, Amparo Gonzales Sola, Flávia Pinheiro, Alexa Mardon, Forough Fami, thanks to Konstantina Georgelou, thanks to all the DAS staff, thanks to Ainhoa Hernandez, Alina Ruiz Folini, Allyson Amaral, Josefa Pereira, João dos Santos Martins, Natália Mendonça, Paula Montecinos, Sara Marques, Venuri Perera and thanks for everything to Leandro Andreatta, Mateus Andreatta and Josiani Andreatta.