This and that, in relation. A Lighthouse

Lisbon late April 2010

2010-05-06T11:07:00.001+02:00

Brazil Dec. 2009, Lagoa Guaiba, Porto Alegre

2010-01-01T20:23:00.002+01:00

Merry X-Mas and fulfilling New Year

2009-12-16T17:43:00.005+01:00

Art work by Mary O'Donnell

Homesick

2009-11-20T14:32:00.002+01:00

Picture not mine, borrowed from the web. This is where I was born.

Not exactly like my weekends.....

2009-11-20T11:11:00.004+01:00

Replace ' internet' with loads of reading, writing and planning.

Autumn II

2009-11-08T16:49:00.000+01:00

Autumn 09

2009-11-07T18:15:00.001+01:00

Glow

2009-08-21T21:35:00.001+02:00

High summer at home

2009-08-15T19:53:00.002+02:00

Lagoa doa Patos, Praia do Laranjal

2009-07-10T21:18:00.002+02:00

Photo from Diario Popular

Dan in Duisburg

2009-06-24T16:34:00.003+02:00

photos by Dan Rhatigan

Loreley, Sankt Goar on the Rhein

2009-06-14T20:39:00.003+02:00

photos by Andreas Stage

Sunday with Barbara

2009-05-31T18:14:00.004+02:00

Photo by João

After DU show

2009-05-22T14:09:00.003+02:00

Photos by João

Sunday on the Rhine

2009-05-10T19:02:00.003+02:00

Photos by João

early morning walk

2009-05-03T12:22:00.003+02:00

Photos by João

Around the Rhine

2009-05-02T19:48:00.002+02:00

Photos by Andreas

Sunday with Helena N.

2009-04-20T20:36:00.002+02:00

Spring in a new car

2009-04-13T17:51:00.002+02:00

The new car in a lovely Spring day

and Andreas and I in the woods

enjoying so much the days off!

Dan

2009-03-25T18:04:00.004+01:00

Dan Rhatigan and I outside ArtEZ

photo by Dan Rhatigan

A bit of southern Brazil

2009-02-27T11:44:00.003+01:00

Notion 1, Open-Form on repetition

2009-02-08T18:06:00.002+01:00

Brazil

2009-01-16T18:39:00.001+01:00

I will be in Brazil February 13th-24th.

It is about time again! And it will be summer!

A sunny afternoon

2008-12-08T11:06:00.000+01:00

Andreas and I

Bartok Zaal/Arnhem

2008-12-07T17:53:00.002+01:00

This is what happened to one of the most beautiful performing spaces in the city of Arnhem. It will probably become a shopping center. The photo has been taken by Jan Bijker

2008-10-12T19:28:00.000+02:00

2008-10-04T19:07:00.001+02:00

Dan's visit & Zollverein

2007-05-01T18:48:00.000+02:00

All photos taken by Dan Rhatigan

Rio

2007-03-31T10:38:00.000+02:00

Inspiration for the days to come!

Vienna day 8

2007-03-12T15:50:00.000+01:00

Pictures from the Museum Quartier in Vienna, where I am still working.
Glorious weather does definitely make dancing every morning even more enjoyable.

And a thought

2007-03-07T21:35:00.000+01:00

"I can't tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that art has often judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past has suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. I know too that the powerful fear art, whatever its form, when it does this, and that amongst the people such art sometimes runs like a rumour and a legend because it makes sense of what life's brutalities cannot, a sense that unites us, for it is inseparable from a justice at last. Art, when it functions like this, becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, guts and honour." John Berger

Vienna day 4

2007-03-07T17:21:00.000+01:00

Another gorgeous day in Vienna, sunny, fresh wind and so much time to wander about.
Hereunder just a couple of images experienced today.

New Brazilian El Dorado?

2007-03-05T19:28:00.000+01:00

Foto: Thomas Milz

Off to Vienna

2007-03-03T12:24:00.000+01:00

I will be teaching at the

Tanzquartier Wien

till March the 17th.
This will be the first serious test after my neck-back injury and the first dance classes I will teach since the beginning of June 06!
I am thrilled to be dancing again. These last 4 weeks I have been taking dance classes, at least once a week, and it felt wonderful.

Nina

2007-02-02T15:36:00.000+01:00

An inspiring image from Nina Hagen's official interim webspace Nina Hagen

Retrospective

2007-01-04T15:25:00.000+01:00

A good part of this holiday season has traditionally been devoted to thinking about 2006. What a year!
Looking back it has been a truly interesting year, with lots to be happy, proud, mad, sad, indignant and disgusted about.

I have learnt once again that my body and my mind have a tendency to, in periods of stress, not align themselves. When this happens in extreme fashion my body totally fails on me and it rebels and stops. This has been the case with my neck injury.
I am still taking baby steps towards a more harmonious and stress-free life style. I do hope that this injury, like the knee injury I had 16 years ago, will teach me how to create long-lasting, fundamental changes towards maintaining a qualitative higher existence. Even though the recovery is hard and slow, I actually welcome it, as I begin to feel I am able to take one day at a time, to work with realizable goals and to recover a somewhat vanished poise.

I do look forward to what 2007 has in store for me!

I am also thankfull for having had opportunities to work in and visit places I had never been to before. The trip to Istambul in late February offered my the chance to meet wonderful people who warmly took me by the hand and showed me way more than the usual touristic attractions of this ancient and fascinating city. The week in Istambul took me back to the time and place I began dancing in Brazil. So many similarities: The very low maintenance studio, the many young dancers craving for information and challenge, the miracle of improvisation, achieving the most out of virtually nothing, the total committment to dancing without the "ifs and buts" of an over-fed, non-chalante, decadent West Europe.

In this time I also got my driver's license in Holland, finally, after many years working on the trauma of a car accident I had when I was 19. This was a huge achievement of which I am really proud! I enjoy very much having the option of driving a car, and so does Andreas, as we now can share long-distance car trips.
I am also a happy owner of an old E190 Mercedes!

Then I was also for a week in Siberia, Krasnojarsk to be precise, where I was part of the jury for the Trans-Siberian Dance Festival and taught dance classes to literally all age groups, ranging from 10 to 60.
This was unbelievable!! I had never seen so much dance talent and committment in the same studio!
I watched over 70 performances. True that I thought most of it was choreographically very traditional and uninformed of recent choreographic thinking and development. However, the fact that those Russians from the White Sea, or from the Balkal or from way east, on the Japanese border were able to bring together their traditions and their knowledge of dance with so much integrity and belief did touch me deeply. Again, what is it that we miss in the West?
Getting to Siberia was an adventure itself into which I will not venture.
Siberia, a mix of its vast space and natural resources with the scars of so many years of communism made me think of Brazil and how lucky brazilians shoud feel for not having had to go through 50 years of a communistic regime.
I just wonder what it would be like to mix the brazilian and russian passions for dance. Can you imagine? Terrific!

Immediately after Russia i flew to Montreal to participate in the "Dancing the Virtual" conference, organized by Erin Manning and Brain Massumi. Despite the jetlag this was an enlightening event. I had been craving for a week in the company of extremely articulate, generous and research-oriented people. In Montreal I got in touch with my academic vein once again and a few bells began to ring.....
Besides, I met my old brazilin friend Cecilia, whom I had not seen for 10 years. what a joy!

A day after my arrival in Holland after Montreal Dance Unlimited Arnhem, the post-graduate course in choreography I head, was visited by a quality control assessment agency. (I must mention here that I worked towards this moment for nearly 3 years!!). After 2 days of talks, presentations etc... we got to hear that the commission needed more information to come down to an assessment. I was crushed!!!!!
Anyway, three weeks later I finally got the specifics of what they needed, worked with my team non-stop for a week and wrote the additional document they asked for.
A few more weeks later we heard we had passed with a good mark.
So now the agency's report is already at the ministry and we are waiting for the official verdic. This is all about Dance Unlimited Arnhem becoming a fully recognized and funded MA in choreography!!!
What a schizophrenic experience that was. On the one hand extremly proud for having pulled this together. On the other hand infinitely tired and desbelieving the system.
Quality controls like this one are increasing and the more one needs to prepare for them the less one is involded with the actual artistic work and research. What a drag! Maybe my contribution to this project approached its end???

At last the summer holidays began and I fled to Brazil, where I plunged for almost 2 months into the beauty and challenge of family life, the pride and shamelessness of brazilians and brazilian structures, the gaps between nature and culture and the power of speaking one's mother tongue.

Back in Europe, the last 4 months have been about finding a way to positively engage with my work in Arnhem, getting back on the dancing track, doing some needed and serious reevaluation of what dancing to me means on a personal level and sharpening my lenses so that I do not miss chances lurking in the world around me.

Look-alikes

2006-12-06T07:50:00.000+01:00

Glenn, thanks for the tip!

http://www.myheritage.com

I am there

2006-12-04T15:57:00.000+01:00

This is just a note to my beloved friends who have been worrying about my health and my being absent from blogging.
Life has not been easy, but my neck condition is steadily getting better and if I am luck I should be able to go back to some dancing by January.
This injury is a pretty serious one and I am after all not so young anymore, so, I must stay consequent and take as long as it takes till I can go back to normal. I am practicing Zen.

For some more tragi-comedy I recommend the film below.

New web site

2006-10-19T13:22:00.000+02:00

I am beginning a new blog, dedicated to my artistic work.
Take a look!
Anangke

Diagnostic

2006-10-19T12:55:00.000+02:00

The mystery has a name!
Degeneration of my C6 vertebra (arthrose in German) and a sliding of 2 discs, which press on the nerve causing it to swell.
I have the neck of a 50 year-old man.
Thanks to dolphin swimming, 20 years of throwing my head about and a great deal of stress in the last 2 years.

Later today I will visit the physiotherapist. I am curious to see how it will go, as I am changing from my long-term physiotherapist in Amsterdam.
Slowly but surely I shift away from NL.
I only hope the pain and the incessant tingling on the arm will go away so that I can sleep a full night of sleep.

C7 yet again

2006-10-18T16:18:00.000+02:00

Between C7 and C8 lies a mystery I have been trying to unveil for the last 10 days or so.
It feels like having a third arm, or a phantom limb....always there, versatile and insistent in its nagging pain.
Tomorrow a MRT scan.

Geburtstagskind

2006-09-11T18:41:00.000+02:00

Czech Republic

2006-09-09T08:57:00.000+02:00

Some images form the week spent with Andreas, Barbara and Carola in the South East of the Czech Republic.

Brazil trip /5th and last part

2006-08-30T12:25:00.000+02:00

Paradise was over!
2 days prior to our return to Europe Andreas realized he could not cash any money using his bank card. The cash dispensers always gave the message he had already exceeded his credit.
Intrigued and deeply irritated we went on the internet to check our accounts.
Result: His bank card had been cloned and systematically abused. Not a small sum of money!

Yes, brazilians are known for being creative and having the ability to improvise. I have never before felt so closely the negative facets of this.

Besides the rage and anger there is a profound sense of hopelessness and vulnerability. This could happen to anyone anywhere. Virtual banking, to mention just one form of personal information sharing, is far from being airtight secure.
Of course things are aggravated in Brazil where there is a inherent culture of impunity.This is a serious problem brazilians need to deal with on a regular basis. Institutions like the police have no legitimacy.

So we had to go to the turist police station, where no one spoke English. Imagine if Andreas had been alone without a person to help translate!!!!!
It took over an hour (!) for a one-paragraph long occurrence bulletin to be written. The day after we went to the bank where the cloning had most likely taken place and spoke to the manager. We did everything we could knowing rather well that unfortunately our case would be no exception to the rule....

Finally back in Germany, this time with no major flight delays (!), body and soul, culture and nature take time to meet.

It seems that Andreas will be able to recover some of the money lost, as his bank has an insurance. Good news!

Brazil trip part 4

2006-08-30T11:40:00.000+02:00

The Brazilian Odyssey continues ....

After our visit to the Sertão Central , which included a visit to the typically religious and pilgrim city of Caninde we were sure we did not want to spend the rest of our holidays in Fortaleza.

Disappointed with Fortaleza we decided to move on to Jericoacoara, a coastal national park in the state of Ceara on the border with Piaui. Jericoacoara is considered to be one of the 10 most beautiful beaches in the world and all I can say is that it definitely deserves the mention!! Do go there before mass turism takes over and spoils it!
Remember that brazilians are usually not very good with long-term planning.

Fortaleza, despite its apparent and superficial appeal proved to be a minor nightmare for anyone looking for a quiet and clean urban beach experience.The closest beach with clean batheable waters lies 12 kilometers awar from the center and once there it is so full of people and windy that all I wanted to do was to pack and leave. So, this beach, the Praia do Futuro, was a one-time experience.
Then there were the hundreds of street vendors continually approaching you in the attempt to force upon you something (mostly useless) for a little money. No, seriously, not one minute alone at a a table on the beach without being approached!!!
I seem to have forgotten what brazilians do in such situations. They seem to not be affected at all. I on the other hand found it hard to ignore it was happening and a couple of times almost got into trouble...
Besides vendors, the many mothers with small children, sick elderly, unemployed, young and old, homeless etc...that made sure to let you know that by not helping one deserved to go to hell and that the weight of guilt would weigh on one's shoulders for the rest of one's life. How is that for a holiday?

so, Jericoacoara: an alternative, post-pseudo-hippie fisherman's village paradise in the middle of nowhere. The last 45 minutes of the journey there had to be driven on a "pau-de-arara" vehicle, which means lots of people bundled together in the back of a truck or open pick-up van, shaking one's bones to the core as the truck finds its way over an amazing sand dune landscape.

Quixada @ Sertao Central-Ceara/BR

2006-08-11T22:13:00.000+02:00

Images from Pelotas-RS/Brazil

2006-08-11T18:38:00.000+02:00

Here my dad and my mother in the kitchen shortly after my arrival

Here my niece Amanda and one of her fashion pictures

My very good friend Angela and I enjoying wine in Laranjal beach, Pelotas-RS

Brazil trip part 3/ July 18th

2006-08-11T17:59:00.000+02:00

On the flight to Fortaleza.
Yet again another long traveling day.
So many hours in transit through a rather huge Brazil.
Slowly I carve in my mind the space for all the different faces of this country.
Skin gradually becomes darker, foreheads larger, speech mellower and much, much slower.
Altogether. Slower than slow, as Rachel Kaplan would say.

Not so sure what I am thinking and feeling right now.
I do not really feel I belong. Well, at least not with a certain proximity of mind.
Observant I realize I understand in my brain but somehow emotional synapses do not occur.

A Fokker 100 airplane on the way to Teresina.
My god, I would never ever think of Teresina if if wasn’t for this stop over on the way from Brazilia to Fortaleza.
A Dutch airplane, I think.

Brazil trip part 2/ July 12th

2006-08-11T17:57:00.000+02:00

My body seems to be getting used to the humidity of the brazilian Pampas. A week here and slowly I appear to come to terms with this moment:
a moment impregnated with old scents, memories, textures, tastes. Emotions harbored deep in my being, unresolved by the lack of continuous proximity, by the broken dialogue and the many half spoken words. So close and yet so alien. I float. I try to anchor this present into a ground of heritage, history, but my grip slides and every time it escapes me a tone of helplessness sinks into my heart.

It is as if time had stopped. The crevisses, holes and bumps of every street are as they were 20 years ago.
I could go on the street blindfold and I would still find my way.

Trip Brazil part 1/July 9th 2006

2006-08-11T15:17:00.000+02:00

Arriving at my parents' house in the southern and remote part of Brazil has made me use up every single fiber of both my patience and energy left at the end of a long and arduous working year.
It took me 64 hours from door to door, from the hour I left home in Oberhausen to the hour I set foot at my parents' apartment building in Pelotas.
Under normal circumstances it takes between 24 and 27 hours to complete the journey, depending on the lay over between flights.
This time, due to the cancellation of the intercontinental flight between Lisbon and Fortaleza (North east of Brazil) and the long delays of the Varig flights inside Brazil this trip was a true nightmare.
It took the ground staff of Tap Air Portugal 5 hours to organize hotel accommodation to all passengers on the flight to Fortaleza.
(Yes, the portuguese are not as efficient as the germans.....)
This was the day Portugal was playing the semi-finals in the soccer world cup.....

So, finally at the hotel, without my suitcase which I could not retrieve from the airport, the extra night in Lisbon was a sticky, stinky experience. Wearing the same clothes for a whole hot day is not very appealing. Well, not to me, at least.

Then there we were back at the airport. The new flight to Fortaleza was delayed 4 hours and a new airplane had to be arranged. A smaller, less comfortable and slower airplane.

By deduction one can realize that I had already lost all my connecting flights in Brazil.
So I sort of prepared myself to get stranded in Fortaleza and pay for a new ticket south bound.

The good news for me was that because Varig has been forced to reduce its net inside Brazil (bankruptcy) a lot of flights had been condensed into one and my original flight was postponed till late in the afternoon. I was extremely happy.
The flight to São Paulo with a stop in Recife lasted 3 and a half hours.

Here I need to mention that not only Varig flights have been cancelled, the onboard service has also been reduced to a ridiculous biscuit and a drink!!! The brazilian national flag carrier became the 3rd airline in brazilian domestic flights. This was unthinkable a couple of years ago, and I must confess my sadness.

The flight from São Paulo to Porto Alegre with a stop in Florianopolis was on time. I was already beginning to feel the breeze of home and I relaxed and fell asleep.

15 minutes before landing in Porto Alegre I woke up with the captain's voice on the loudspeakers saying that due to intense fog he could not safely land in Porto Alegre and therefore we were being flown back to Florianopolis. There we waited 2 hours until the decision to return to São Paulo was made. The infrastructure in Florianopolis was not good enough to accommodate all stranded passengers. Especially because it was 2 am.

We arrived in São Paulo at 4:30 am in the promise that we would be flying back to Porto Alegre on the 7:40 am flight to Buenos Aires.
To make a long story short: Dirty, tired and hungry, we all spent the night at an anonymous airport gate and at 10 am with an almost 3 hour delay we left.
The flight was smooth and shortly before 12 am I was In Porto Alegre.
Excited and relieved, I took a deeper breath and went to the bus depot to get my ticket for the last lag of my trip: a three hour bus ride to Pelotas.

The weather was nice, unusually warm for this time of the year. Mom and dad were waiting for me.

Ahhhh

2006-06-30T09:44:00.000+02:00

This is the last day of June and my last day at work, before the long awaited summer holidays. On the 5th I am flying to Brazil and I know my mind is not yet empty enough to embark upon this trip. I have 5 days to realign and get my priorities straight.

Goodness, I do not remember having ever had such a hard year, having to deal with problems not created by myself, having to face so many degrees of professional incompetence and carelessness, having to carve every inch of space for the fulfillment of my ideas, my vision. Is this normal or am I just unlucky, in the wrong context?

I can tell that whatever was left in me of naivite is gone. Every single cell in my body seems to have deflated to a sort of 'ground zero' and my main task now, for my survival and integrity, is to slowly, very slowly, pick the crumbles scattered around me and dilligently rebuild my belief system. My mental health comes first.
I am here speaking of working within large institutions, surrounded by bureucrats who apparently have nothing other in mind than finding the easiest way to reach a fat pension and who have lost the enthusiasm to continue to invest in artistic research.

At the same time that I am happy that the post graduate course I head will be accredited as a Masters I have a tremendously hard time seeing the course grow and mature within the frames of its institution as it is at the moment.
I have had to shovel so much effort away from what really matters, artistic research, that I do wonder if the trouble is worth.

Anyway, summer is there and maybe Brazil will heal, if not all, some of the wounds left open this last year.
I am trying to stay positive and focus on the good things that have happened. Yes, there were quite a few excellent achievements. It is just that they happened outside my main job.
So, time to move on?

A bit of a Matrix

2006-06-22T11:26:00.000+02:00

These are a couple of images from one of my classes with the second years of the BA dance department.

Spin

2006-06-09T10:15:00.000+02:00

SPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPIN
SPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPIN
SPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPIN
SPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPIN
SPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPIN
SPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPIN
SPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPIN
SPINSPINSPINSPINSPIN

I can't wait to get out of it.
Counting the days.

test

2006-05-31T08:46:00.000+02:00

Testing first video upload onto this blog.

Double

2006-05-21T08:46:00.000+02:00

This is me, times 2, demonstrating the beginnings of a spiral to one of the groups I taught in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia.

Montreal

2006-05-21T08:30:00.000+02:00

Jose Gil

Tom talking about calligraphy and Celine paying attention

Erin and Brian demonstrating a relation

Me and Cecilia at the airport

You can also check Dancing the Virtual's blog at
Dancingthevirtual

Dancing the Virtual

2006-05-07T06:47:00.000+02:00

Dancing the Virtual is the name of the event I will be participating in Montreal, Canada, next week.
Thesenselab

I am very excited. More on this soon.

Siberia

2006-05-05T18:41:00.000+02:00

Voila!
The first visual impressions of Krasnoyarsk, Siberia.
Russian cities are pretty gloomy, especially in Siberia in the end of a long winter.......lots of dust and dirt and faces that long for a better and easier life. I decided not to include such photos.

The committment of people in the festival was outstanding. Dancers, students, teachers, choreographers and organizers all had a passion for dance and dancing rare to find in the west.

Happy Easter

2006-04-13T18:17:00.000+02:00

I wish you all a good Easter ! Feliz Pascoa!

Krasnoyarsk/Russia

2006-04-09T08:07:00.000+02:00

On the 26th of this month I will be flying to Russia to teach a week of Master Classes and to be part of the jury of the 6th Festival of Modern Dance Isadora in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia.
I am very excited as I am sure dancers and students will be highly motivated and skilled.
Besides, this will be my first visit to Russia and Siberia will certainly hold a few surprises.
For now a text extracted from the web about the city.
For more information about Krasnoyarsk and Siberia refer to Krasnoyarsk

What is Krasnoyarsk - Facts about the city.

Krasnoyarsk is located 4065 kilometers from Moscow along the Trans-Siberian railway. It takes about 2 days and 10 hours to get there from Moscow by train and about 4.5 hours by plane.
Krasnoyarsk is the center of the vast Krasnoyarsk region, it is the second biggest city in Siberia after Novosibirsk and a powerful industrial center. There are about 950,000 inhabitants.
Despite that Krasnoyarsk is a very pleasant city and we definitely recommend you to stop there for a day or two on your way along the Trans-Siberian. Near Krasnoyarsk (20 mins by car from center) there's a national park Stolby - a very diverse natural area with unusual cliffs.

Also, Krasnoyarsk can be a good starting place for trips in Khakasiya and Tuva.
The city also amazes with the hospitality of local people — a typical Siberian trait, but especially evident in Krasnoyarsk. Everybody: from a bus conductor to a stranger on the street seem to want to make you feel good and proud of their city.

Krasnoyarsk lies along Enisey river — one of the most beautiful and powerful rivers of Siberia. It is surrounded by mountains, giving a very interesting flavour to the city views.
If you have only a few hours between trains in Krasnoyarsk, you can walk around the city center. The infrastructure is well-developed and there are a lot of cafes, restaurants, and a few 24-hour internet cafes.
If you have more than 1 day, you may consider going to the national park Stolby, giving yourself a nice fresh-air break from train journey.

The history of Krasnoyarsk counts back to the year 1628 when it was founded by the cossack Andrey Dubensky. At that time it used to be a local center and was an important transport hub for river transport (Enisey river goes up to North ocean). During the XIX century it was an imporant cultural center of Siberia: in the end of 1880s the Regional Studies Museum was opened: one of the most imporant ethnographic and archeology museums in Russia. The Trans-Siberian road passing through Krasnoyarsk gave a boost to industrial development of the city, especially metal production, oil, and construction industries.

License to....

2006-04-08T08:40:00.000+02:00

I am very happy to let you all know that after 20 years having a major driving issue I have, last week,passed my driving test in Holland.
The 30 hours of driving lessosns were an emotional roller coaster, as due to various reasons I had 6 different instructors, each with a slightly different approach to teaching and giving feed back. The classes were all in Dutch and once more I came to the realization that my relationship to the Dutch language is very superficial. It is very odd. Cognition and emotion do not seem to go hand in hand. Rarely.
Now I just need to create space for cars and driving in my life.
I am very happy with the enhanced freedom and I am sure I will enjoy it very much.
Wanna go for a ride?

Dance UNLIMITED

2006-04-02T09:37:00.000+02:00

Dance Unlimited Arnhem has selected its students for the next cohort (06-08).
Amazing how fast time passes. Also amazing to see the hard work done in the last 2 years pay off.

"WASH" a visual brief history

2006-04-02T09:23:00.000+02:00

WASH WASH WASH WASH WASH WASH WASH WASH WASH WASH WASH WASH WASH WASH WASH WASH WASH WASH WASH ME

Slowly but always......
Hereunder a few images of "WASH", the piece I have made with students of the dancers department of ArtEZ, Arnhem, NL.
Music by Hilary Jeffery, words and live vocals by me.

Fiat Lux

2006-03-19T08:15:00.000+01:00

I kind of had a feeling when I woke up this Sunday morning that I was going to be able to go through the day without worrying too much about work.
So, here I am after a rather longish absence.

Below, a taste of Istanbul, where I was working for a week 15 days ago.

A morning in Arnhem

2006-02-07T21:47:00.000+01:00

Voila! This is more or less what I have been seeing these last days as I leave the house in Arnhem on my way to work early in the morning

Quase

2006-01-29T17:07:00.000+01:00

The weekend is almost over and I slowly prepare to go back to Arnhem on the 8 o'clock train. After 3 extremely busy weeks at work I seem to have found a rhythm that apparently does not kill me. Not yet.
The full-time teaching schedule, the coordination of the MA, the upcoming auditions and my driving lessons (yes, I am driving again after 20 years of fear and abstinence) offer me enough of a challenge. I am working within a 9 week time frame. There are 6 more to go. I hope I will be able to stay put as the hardest is still to come.

This weekend at home here in Germany has been pretty quiet. Lots of naps, cuddling and a few bowls of the delicious soup Andreas has cooked. With the cold temperatures outside I could wish for no better treatment.

Flickr

2006-01-13T21:30:00.000+01:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Salvation!

2006-01-08T21:51:00.000+01:00

The "Gas service" man finally came and fixed the problem.
The temperature in the house is now 13 degrees Celsius and increasing. :)

Ice cold

2006-01-08T19:31:00.000+01:00

Horrible! Simply horrible the resented and unwanted return to Arnhem !!
My 3 month stay in Arnhem, dut to full time teaching, has begun in catastrophical style. Upon arrival Andreas and I realized the central heating system was not working. After almost an hour trying to fix it ourselves we called a service number. It seems that someone will come soon to take a look. I sincerley hope it will be fixed before I have to jump into an ice cold bed to sleep and run the risk of waking up with a frozen spine. Not an ideal situation as I have to teach a dance class at 9am....Not to mention either the cold shower or abstaining from taking one...
As it had not gotten bad enough, when I stepped into the bathroom I saw it was completely inundated. I had forgotten to close the doors to the shower box and apparently water had been dripping from the shower head for almost 3 weeks, since I last was in the flat.
I am on trial here.
I sincerely hope this will not get any worse. I will try to keep up the good humor. And keep moving....

Lesson

2006-01-06T16:35:00.000+01:00

I learned a hard lesson today when I changed the template of this blog without saving the links!!
I hope I will remember next time.
Anyway, I hope you like the new look.

Joao and Andreas

2006-01-04T12:36:00.000+01:00

Andreas

João

Vital

2006-01-03T16:05:00.000+01:00

To all of you who still take the time to visit my blog I would like to wish you a fulfilling, healthy and inspiring 2006!
Good work, good food, good friends and good sex should not harm.

The first entry of this year I would like to dedicate to all of you who in a way or another have an interest in composition in general and in dance composition in particular. As you may know, I am doing research about the Genealogy of the term Open Form Composition. The book I am reading at the moment is Umberto Eco's "The Open Work" (1962), a very informative and revealing book. A must reading for anyone interested in the so called "Art of Spontaneity".
The text below is an excerpt from it (Chapter 4). Enjoy!!
Any thoughts are also very welcome.

"By refusing to use any form of control, tachism rejects beauty in favor of vitality.
If contemporary art merely upheld the values of vitality (as the negation of form) over those of beauty, there would be no problem: at this particular stage in the evolution of taste, we all could easily make do without the latter. What concerns us here is not the aesthetic value of an act of vitality but rather its power to communicate. Our civilization is still far from accepting the unconditional abandonment to vital forces advocated by the Zen stage. He can sit and blissfully contemplate the unchecked potential of the surrounding world: the drifting of clouds, the shimmer of water,cracks in the ground, sunlight on a drop of dew. And to him everything is a confirmation of the endless, polymorphous triumph of the All. But we still live in a culture in which our desire to abandon ourselves to the free pursuit of visual and imaginative associations must be artificially induced by means of an intentionally suggestive construct. As if that were not enough, not only do we have to be pushed to enjoy our freedom to enjoy, but we are also asked to evaluate our enjoyment, and its object, at the very moment of its occurrence. In other words, we still live in a culture dominated by dialectics: I am supposed to judge both the work in relation to my experience of it, and my experience of it in relation to the work. I might even have to try to locate the reasons for my reaction to the work in the particular ways the work has been realized - if nothing else, in order to judge it as a means to an end, at once process and result, the fulfillment or the frustration of certain expectations and certain goals. For the only criterion I can use in my evaluation of the work derives from the degree of coincidence between my capacity for aesthetic pleasure and the intentions to which the artist has implicitly form his work.
Thus, even an art that upholds the values of vitality, action, movement, brute matter, and chance rests on the dialectics between the work itself and the "openness" of the "readings" it invites. A work of art can be open only as it remain a work; beyond a certain boundary, it becomes mere noise.
To define this threshold is not a function of aesthetics, for only a critical act can determine whether and to what extent the "openness" of a particular work to various readings is the result of an intentional organization of its field of possibilities. Only then can the message be considered an act of communication and not just an absurd dialogue between a signal that is, in fact, mere noise, and a reception that is nothing more than solipsistic ranting"

World Aids Day

2005-12-02T18:34:00.000+01:00

This is yet another call for awareness.
For the record, in Germany the number of HIV+ people has increased 30% , the majority of which young people.

Lecture demonstration/Ereignis continues

2005-11-29T11:26:00.000+01:00

Lecture demonstration/ “Ereignis”
Epic Seminar
Groningen
Dec. 15th 2005

How differently than verbal & discursive language is movement understood in terms of experience?
On what sort of signs does a lay audience rely in the act of “reading” dance?

We will venture into finding a few answers to this questions by doing an exercise in perception, namely to watch the same choreography twice.

The first time it will be performed without the accompanying piece of music.
The dancer, being used to rely on the music as one of the main elements that hold the timing of her actions together, will have to rely among other things on how well she re-members the song in order to come as close as possible to what we will today call the original. She will be sort of simultaneously re-membering and pro-jecting reality.

“Remembering the past while inventing the present requires enormous effort in dance, and dancers who acquire this facility vault into an extraordinary compelling state of awareness. Re-membering is what keeps power circulating through the collective actions of the dance. Re-membered, power can never embed itself within a static structural element that would allow it to flex into hierarchies of domination and control. It can only keep on the move, running as fast as it can to partner, to empower performers.
Re-membering is how you ask the dance what it needs.
Re-membering one pushes the body into history. It emphasizes collective endeavor and it reflects on its own making.”1

Kent de Spain has said: ‘One of the things I find fascinating about real time composition (I am assuming dancing is by nature a real time composition) is that most of the longtime practitioners treat it less as a tool and more as an end in itself. For such people, the primary purpose of real time composition is simply to experience themselves improvising. They are not so much concern with “why” they improvise as they are with “how” they improvise, forming part of the structure of the perpetual “now” that both determines and is determined by their actions. Real time composition is a way of being present in the moment, and your awareness of yourself within that moment both challenges and refines your presence in each subsequent moment.” 2

So, how can you access real time experiences without disturbing or destroying the real time composition state in which they are occurring?

Quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg taught us last century that the very act of observing a system alters the system.

After she has danced the solo, I would like to ask you to take a couple of minutes to consider what you have perceived.
Let’s say there was a dialog between the dance and you. What did the dance “say”?
What did you experience?
Re-member that the dancer might have watched you as well.

We will then take some more time to discuss and comment on your observations.
This is the time where you can ask both the choreographer and the dancer any questions regarding the piece.
How do choreographers communicate to dancers?
How do dance artists read information?
When does the choreographer say “the dancer has “understood” the dance”? or

when does the dancer say I have “gotten” it?
When does the dancer “speak” the language envisioned by the choreographer?
What are some of the things one does not need to say because they are tacitly understood?

At the end of this round of discussion the solo will be danced a second time. This time with the accompanying original song.

Once she has danced the solo for the second time, I would like to ask you to again take a couple of minutes to consider what you have perceived.
How did the verbal part of the piece affect you?
How central to the composition is the verbal part?

How do you as audience fill in the gaps, the open spaces carved and created by the dance?
How much of “you” are you willing to chip in into the being of the piece?

1. From “Dances that describe themselves, Richard Bull’s “improvised choreography”, by Susan Leigh Foster p. 244-245
2. Excerpt from kent de Spain’s article in “Taken by Surprise”, ed. Ann Cooper Albright and David Gere, p. 27
(I have substituted improvisation for "real time composition" and the assumption that Dance is by default real time composition is mine).

Quasi there

2005-11-26T17:39:00.000+01:00

For a couple of different reasons I am happy with the fact that since yesterday it has been snowing . From the windows of the flat one can see the large flakes of snow being blown by unusually strong winds.
I am happy for the romantic beauty such a scene evokes in me in this moment and I am happy for the comfort of home, for being able to stay inside as I watch people do their Saturday shopping.

Slower than slow, as once said, seems to me to be a valid motto in times of "self-shifting-centered-multiple-drafted-attempts-at-cognition" or more simply said, in times when the mind is spinning at a high speed, trying to grasp loads of independent bits of information moving in and towards it.

The big windows separating me from the street outside somehow have the power to put me in a slowed-down relation to what I am thinking. Something like the thousands of blazing snow flakes seen in slow motion. For a prolongued second I can experience and distinguish all in their individuaity.
Is this a state of grace? Or just another concoction of my imagination?

The wind stops blowing and I recoil back inside. In this transit I breathe into my 7th cervical and finish this entry.

Hibernation

2005-11-21T18:06:00.000+01:00

Beginning today I will have 4 full weeks to mainly focus on my next group piece and to continue to research into the genealogy of the term Open Form Composition. I have come across a number of very interesting books and websites and I am very glad I will have time to read them without time pressure.
If any one of you out there reading this entry has any tips for me, do not be shy. Spill your beans out.

Rehearsals with Gabriela for yet another piece have been revealing. I think that I am ready to begin to bring other dancers into the process. Working title is "Wash".
Speaking of dances, I will present "Ereignis" in the "EpicSeminar" in Groningen on the 15th of December in the frame of an international non-verbal communication seminar. I am thrilled.

I am also pleased I will have some quality time to work on the Digital Portfolio of Dance Unlimited Arnhem, the main body of information for the coming accreditation. Yes, we are now almost in the last leg of a rather long process towards accreditation as a Masters Course in Choreography.
This is pretty serious. If we do not pass the accreditation process we will have to close our doors by July 2008, the graduation of the 3rd cohort. If we do pass, we will be able to do it for another 6 years. Then another accreditation.....Tough no?

Anyway, despite the enormous amount of work to do and multiple challenges lying just ahead I feel good.
Last week I taught 2 dance classes which I actually enjoyed.
I am perhaps experiencing one of those somehow rare "integrated" moments, where body, mind and spirit all seem to be one.
And speaking of such moments, I have to get dinner ready.

Translation

2005-11-11T21:07:00.000+01:00

Make the effort to remember

100.000 or more

manu-factured

drops of sweat.

The man made in black & white.

A time for the man and his name.

*Text inspired by the Zollverein site, on November 1st, as part of the Symposium "Tracing Translation".
Session led by Antoni Muntadas.

imPACT05

2005-11-02T20:17:00.000+01:00

Hereby the first images of imPACT05 (Tracing Translation) the Synposium I have participated in these last 4 days.
More on it soon.

Past

2005-10-29T13:17:00.000+02:00

Hafdis Arnadottir, the Icelandic woman who offered me my very first teaching job back in 1986, and Kramhusid, the studio where I taught my first classes.
Both pictures are recent. A sign that both Hadfis and Kramhusid are still alive and kicking!!

Learning

2005-10-23T12:47:00.000+02:00

I have finally decided to take the time and put my brain to work on figuring out how to use what Blogger has to offer.
I am very happy with the links section and with the small sized picture on the sidebar.
Any tips from anyone who bothers to read this blog and knows more about html are welcome.

On Manifesto. A retrospective thought.

2005-10-23T11:45:00.000+02:00

The MANI(fest)O series came into being out of a deep necessity to create and to comment on theatre(dance) making.
This was in 1999.

The MANI(fest)O series was a concrete manifestation of what I believed in at that point in time and reflected the thoughts and ideas I brought into my teaching, especially into the composition classes.

The MANI(fest)O series expressed an aesthetic point of view.
It did not wish to be entertaining.

The MANI(fest)O series spoke of ISLANDS.
It hypothesized that the theatre space is an island. Not necessarily a paradisiacal one.

By recreating already existing islands I deconstructed them. I shifted what was central to them in their usual readings.
By deconstructing them I recreated context, where, in these instances( the ones of the series) audience is not a costumer-buyer but an active participant, where choreographer-maker is not the "artist-owner" but the navigator .
The navigator surrenders the ship to the mercy of the context.

The MANI(fest)O series was about relinquishing the choreographic control and ownership. It questions the safety of the theatre space.

The series was also a sort of personal aesthetic manifesto, It presented some of the things I say “yes”to .

*Sammy, I hope this gives you a bit more information. If not, let me know. I would be happy to look into it.

McGregor & Waldmann

2005-10-22T22:13:00.000+02:00

This weekend has been full of dance. I have seen at the Pact Zollverein in Essen Wayne McGregor's & Random Dance (Sadler's Wells/London) "AMU" and at the Tanzhaus in Dusseldorf Helena Waldmann's (Berlin) "Letters from Tentland".

McGregor's work inspired in me a hightened sense of articulated time through some very rigorous, refined and unusual movement coordinations, danced by very good technical dancers, versed both in the vertical and horizontal positioning of the axis of the body.
Some of the phrasings, especially in the partnering sections, were intriguing and refreshing.
The large groupings in the end when dancers went into and out of synch in apparently chaotic arrangements were also a joy to watch.

The solo/chorus relationships were traditionally composed, spatially and temporally. The music seemed to me to be a mixture of Gregorian chanting,Wagnerian Opera and Arabic sounds. A bit like the movement material, hybrid, but only lacking the sense of "embodiment" that the dancers could render to the vocabulary they were dancing.

At the end there seemed to be a technical problem with the beamers, which turned the image of the spirits detaching from the actual bodies on stage into an even longer image. This stretched timing made an image apparently constructed to evanesce one's thinking into the realm of the sublime become almost banal. A pity, really.

I left the theater with the satisfaction of having seen some fabulous movement composition and dancing.
Having had no expectations seems to have been a good strategy to once again enjoy dance performances, which I also certainly did in Waldmann's case.

Her work with Iranian dancers inspired me for its simplicity, invention and straightforwardness.
One can read and understand what the piece will speak of in the very first minute of the show.
Helena Waldmann managed to communicate the obvious in a very creative and inventive manner.
How she used the tents was to me a topological study. Unexpected images emerged and the issues of who watches whom were thereby brought to light in a fresh way (given the very top heavy approach "reflexive" choreographers have had towards audience and its status in performance).

The music and the texts (projected and spoken) supported coherently the dramaturgy of the piece.
In the end the female members of the audience were invited to see the tent.
The men , not allowed , respectfully left.

East Germany

2005-10-21T12:53:00.000+02:00

And some more pictures.
I have now a weekend to shift away from the inspiring travels of the last month and get ready for what is to come in Arnhem, NL, where I will be doing my regular teaching and coordinating work.

Tonight the solo I have made on Gabriela Tarcha, Ereignis, is being performed in Rio de Janeiro.
I wish I could be there to see it and enjoy the beauty of the city.
I am sure though Gabriela will do a great job.

East Germany

2005-10-21T12:45:00.000+02:00

Here some pictures of a magnificent short trip to the Eastern part of Germany.
I highly recommend it!

Time 3

2005-10-16T16:46:00.000+02:00

Anna Richardsdottir and I, Reyjkavik 1996

Islandia folk

2005-10-16T16:38:00.000+02:00

Some of the people I have interacted with in my stay in Reyjkavik.

Cleaning dance

2005-10-16T10:20:00.000+02:00

The 10th of October was my friend Anna Richardsdottir's birthday. She lives in Akureyri, North of Iceland.
On that day,for some years already, she has been performing all over the world a performance/event/ritual called the "Cleaning Dance".
She has now opened this up to anyone who wishes to perform this cleaning dance. Cleaning can be openly interpreted.
When one accepts to join in, one needs to sort of sign a contract where one commits to performing a cleaning ritual every year on the 10th of October for 10 years.
Anna also asks the participants to document their performance.
The pictures above are the documentation of the ritual/performance I did on 10/10/05.

Reykjavik morning

2005-10-06T22:17:00.000+02:00

This is more or less what I see every morning on my way to work here in Reykjavik.
Just a fraction of what the skies can become up here.

Iceland

2005-09-28T19:43:00.000+02:00

A glimpse of Reyjkavik.

Manifesto/2000

2005-09-21T21:34:00.000+02:00

Samuel Dellicour in " Manifesto", a performance event I have made under the Nelson Mandela bridge in Arnhem, NL.
More on the Manifesto series at a later time.

More storm

2005-09-08T14:38:00.001+02:00

How did I become a dancer?

I have come to dancing through a Brazilian dancer/choreographer who came to see a Theater performance in 1984 (Carroll's Alice in the wonderland) where I played the part of the cat. She came up to me after she saw the show to give me her business card and tell me that I should dance, given the beautiful movement qualities I could embody as playing the cat part. She said I was a natural dancer.
Before this happened, I had lived in the USA for a whole year, where I did follow with much enthusiasm dance classes, so dancing was already on my mind.

I loved the television series Fame and Prince was one my favorite pop artists, because of his multi talents that included great moving on stage.

It took me about a month to go to the studio where the woman mentioned above taught dance classes.
I danced in 2 of her productions. For my participation in one I got the prize of best dancer.
I have never stopped dancing ever since, even though I have not performed myself for the last 5 years.

(It is important to mention that my mother was a ballet dancer herself. She also loved to dance in parties.
From the age of 8 to the age of 17 I did sports on a regular and intensive basis.)

How did I become a choreographer?

In my 3rd year living in Iceland(1989) I heard about a school in Holland where they taught choreography. After looking into their brochure and making a phone call to speak to the director of the school (Mary O'Donnell) I decided very spontaneously to fly to Holland for the audition.
I got into the school and my life then changed exponentially.
I breathed choreography 24 hours a day. Every one on this school was busy, in a way or another, with dance making.

My first choreographic job, however, came from a dancing job I had in Bonn, Germany, where I was a dancer in Horvart's Die Italienische Nacht .
One of the actresses in the cast was going to direct a theater play for children, Kippling's The Jungle Book, in a smaller theater not far from Dusseldorf. She asked me if I wanted to choreograph the piece for her. I accepted. This was in 1990 and so my choreographic life began.

Are there other professions/states of being that I would consider or even prefer doing if I had been born endowed with the same qualities but in another family/milieu?

As you know I am a NLP master practitioner and I have studied languages. I could for sure do something with both. I think that I already combine my dance making and teaching work with my language interests. I would like to find intriguing ways to continue to combine and mingle them even more.
I also want to capitalize more on my NLP knowledge and abilities, making more money for instance.

I do not think that I would do something different if I had been born in another environment or family. The greatest gift from my parents in how and where they raised me is that they had total trust and confidence in me. They have always supported what I wanted to do, even when they had a different opinion.
I am also immensely happy I grew up in Brazil.
My Brazilian roots balance out the western European life I have lived for the last 20 years.(As a Brazilian one usually says Yes. As a western European one usually doubts first)

In my fantasy, I can see myself as a criminal forensic detective.
I find it a fascinating profession.
Perhaps in my next life???

What moves me to move?

I can not conceive a life without movement.
Physical restriction is one of the worst things I can imagine for myself.
The comfort of my body often dictates how my mind works.

In my choreographic work I am primarily moved by questions, thoughts, painting, music and human sensuality. I am interested in cruelty as for me all truly beautiful things are cruel.
They touch me and when they touch me repeatedly and intriguingly enough I am prone to interpret/translate them into movement studies/embodiments/studies.
I am also prone to move when I experience a lack of movement. In this way, my choreographic work can be a response/critique to things I disagree with ( example : other choreographies and/or choreographic approaches can move me to move as well).

I am also moved by the sheer opportunity to learn and experience more.

I am moved by details, faces of old people, hands and lips,
I am moved by associative intelligences.
I am moved by my past in how its memories inhabit me .

what I do a research into:? Myself?
Is it important for me to be recognized? If so, by whom?

I am researching into what I call the Matrix, a multilayered moving/shifting- grid of information, where the relationship/dialogue between choreographer, dancers and audience is central.
I am embedded in it.

I am looking into a spectrum of embodiment(psycho-physical) where on the one hand the body presents itself as extremely abstract and on the other hand as extremely real.
I am looking into how the body in movement can dilate and move the space surrounding it.
I am looking into how I can through my dance works offer my audience the opportunity to remember something new.

Yes, I would like my work to be recognized by lay and professional people alike.
I would not mind earning more money with my work.
I would like people to both like and understand my work.

I wish my work to make a difference.

What is my hidden view on life? Am I disappointed with life? Is living this life a strange adventure?

In many ways I think I have been very lucky with all the wonderful things and people and places I have come in touch with.
Had I stayed in my home country I probably would not be working with dance at all, or at least not in the same intensity and proximity as I have been able to do in Europe. I would have succumbed to working within a profession that pays better, like so many of my friends.
The irony of me having left my home country is that I have never again found a home anywhere else. I am flexible but deep inside my flexible brain what I really wish is that I could do what I do in a land where I can speak my mother language, where I can understand the body language of people walking on street more quickly and more effortlessly.

I have to say that having to deal with all the problems of my family in Brazil , primarily financial, but not only, has made me deeply tired and disbelieving in systems and the state.

I wish things could be different. I wish the world would be fairer. I wish I could enjoy my family more instead of either feeling worried or experiencing anger.
I wish my family could help me. I wish the government could help my family.
I wish I could help my family without having the feeling of must. I wish I had enough money to help.
I wish I could just be and play the son part. I wish I could cry on the shoulders of my parents or of my sister. I wish I did not have to parent my parents and my sister.

I wish we could achieve what we want to achieve without having to continually step over each other toes
I wish people could be happy for the joy and success of the competitor.
I wish religions and systems of belief would not claim to be absolute truths.
I wish people would dare to not do what everybody else does. I wish there would be more space for excellence. We accept far too easily mediocrity.

I wish Art would make a real difference in the world. I wish I can contribute to it, somehow.
I wish artists could live with their art and not just survive.
I wish we would not need to put up so many defense mechanisms in order to feel safe.

I wish I could come to dying being ready to detach completely from any earth bound feeling or activity.
I wish I could burn all my karma in this life.
When dead I want to fly and experience weightlessness, literally and metaphorically.
I want to look back and smile.

This is indeed a very strange world and living this life has been a lot of work.
I think I am gifted, but nothing, absolutely nothing has come to me for free.
I am well aware of what it takes me to achieve a sense of accomplishment.

I hope my life will become easier in the sense that satisfaction and joy and tenderness exist hand in hand with hard, committed and challenging work.

(...) to be continued(...)

Brain Storming

2005-08-27T16:50:00.000+02:00

Who am I? What do I want?

I am a 40 year old Brazilian who has devoted 3/4 of his life investigating the human body in movement in a number of practices and academic environments.
I have now spent more than half of my life outside my country of origin and have lived and worked in 7 countries.
I adapt easily to new situations.
I have been commuting for the last 3 and a half years between 2 countries almost on a daily basis. In a normal working day I speak from 3 to 5 different languages.
My mother language, however, remains for me the language of mystery and wonder. It is the language in which I do not experience conscious “translation”.

I feel I am endowed with the ability to find home in transitional spaces.
I perceive movement in the transitions, in the duration of psycho -physical actions. Neither in one exact place nor in another. Rather in the “in-between”.

Precision to me is revealed when I experience a full present. Neither past nor future.
I identify it as physically existing somewhere between the ear and the eye.
A beautiful dance moment for me is a moment in which the memory of a “past-ness” and the projection of a “futurity” melt.
I am then “affected”.
I wish my dances to do just that to the audience.

In my working life for the last 11 years I have primarily worked in higher Education Institutions, mostly part-time.
The work I have done has been a combination of teaching/coaching/policy making/creating dance works.
Parallel to my institutional commitments, I have had the opportunity to teach and create choreographic works outside the institution.
The fact that I have been able to get out of the institution regularly has helped me find a balance between the professional and the pre-professional world.
The institutional work has provided me with a financial stability much needed, given the fact that I have been supporting my family on a regular basis since 1997.
I am glad and proud of being able to remain financially independent and sustain an inspiring dance career for so long.

I have come to a moment in my life where the institutional work no longer feeds my artistic and intellectual needs as it used to. The ideal working situation for me would be that I create choreographic works, that I engage in robust intellectual dialogue with other artists and thinkers in the field and that I have the power to choose when to teach.
Teaching has been incredibly fulfilling, but to “have to teach” because this is a job becomes harder and harder to cope with.

I see that I need to prioritize my choreographic practice and expose it more regularly to the field of experts.
I am in the moment debating how to do it.
How will I be able to remain financially independent, help my family and expand my choreographic identity?

I am not the type of person who easily accepts being helped.
Life so far has taught me to soften and give in a little.
I am aware I need other people to help me with my enterprises on all levels.
I am in the process of re-identifying who my “tribe” is.
I am looking for contexts where I can continue to be myself to the fullest. Where I and others can speak their mind, where conflict is not seen as an obstacle for growth, where differences are welcome, where there is a concern for quality, where people are committed to what they do.
I hope that my choreographic work will make a positive difference in the perceptions of its core and occasional audiences. I wish that my audiences will be affected by my work on a number of interrelated centers (mind, heart, gut, sex,,…).

List of descriptive, metaphorical or evocative adjectives that describe my personality as an artist

Brain storm:

Inquisitive, direct, mysterious, observant, physical, sequential , impulsive, fast, disciplined, organized , intuitive , discerning, clear, honest, perseverant, adaptable , sensual perceptive , a-social,
critical , detailed, formal , curious, precise , giving, demanding, balanced, associative , cunning, decisive , tender , playful , ironic , serious, inter-textual , temporal

1st filter:

Inquisitive , associative, inter-textual, curious, mysterious , physical, observant , sequential, honest, perseverant , intuitive, sensual, decisive, temporal , precise , detailed

2nd filter:

Inquisitive , associative , physical/sensual , inter-textual , detailed

3rd filter: Core

Physical/sensual, inter-textual, inquisitive, precise

Brain storm on how I see the audiences for my work

Core audience: An audience used to formal and inter-textual dance works. Audiences who are used to and appreciate a bringing of the body in movement together with concepts and ideas from philosophy and science. Audiences who say Yes to Dance and dancing in an open minded manner.

Occasional audience: Audiences of main stream and well established works. Audiences who expect a particular codification of the body in movement, but are not necessarily acquainted with some of the ideas inherent to the work.

Peripheral audience: Academics with no relationship to an artistic practice and audiences who are not as willing to take onboard the fact that my work might require them to think.

The choreographic work itself

My choreographic work arises from me being intrigued and curious about something that for one reason or another catches my attention in a non ordinary way. Non ordinary means that this something insists in returning to my consciousness in such a way that curiosity turns into a study, an acute observation. It becomes “necessity”. I need to be involved with it in a real and practical way, going to the studio, making movement phrases, writing notes, listening to music , seeing in my head bodies (y) cut through space , seeing the space surrounding the body(ies) move, change, transform, inflate, dilate, rotate, evanesce, reappear…
In my work one of the main things I do is to (re)create physical and mental spaces for both dancers and audience alike.
When physical and mental are aligned I dare say my dances have the power to move its audiences in an emotional way as well.
I look into my work a bit as a scientist. I sculpt my way into the flesh of my dancers, scrutinizing my own perception of what presents itself to my gaze and appreciation.

I believe I have the means to realize most of what pulses “in the back of my head” when it has to do with bringing forth the sort of embodiment I am fascinated by.
In my work I tend to give up on ideas of elaborate set designs, lights and costumes more easily and quickly than what I would like to. I as an artist still function in a very small scale of production.
The result is that most of my work relies substantially on what I can do with the dancers concretely and live on stage.
In my understanding of Dance as an art form the human body in movement needs to be central to the work in a major way. This means both in how much the product relies on the quality of what the dancers do and in how the process of communication between dancers and choreographer takes place during rehearsal.
My dances feed on the intensity and fluency of dialogue between myself and the dancers.

Even though the human body in movement is the pivotal center around which my work develops and evolves, there is no reason not to include fancy and elaborate set designs, flamboyant costumes and sharp and imaginative lights.
I fact, I consider myself and my perception highly visual and often I do envisage objects and extra-ordinary elements in my dances.
As said, often I give up on them due to infra-structural limitations.

I would absolutely love to have the means to enter a dialogue with other artists and be able to materialize my “non-movement” ideas.
It is a question of having access to funding. But not only, it is also a question of being open to expand one’s own boundaries through having conceptual and practical contact with other artists.

I can easily see for the future a situation where I work with a small number of core dancers and a varying number of guest dancers on multi-disciplinary projects.

My choreographic work up to now can de divided into two main areas of concern:

1) The solo and group work I have done in the 90’s where I was very much interested in questioning the possibilities of connecting my work and research on movement technique to the choreographic product itself and where the work was inspired by structuralism and post-structuralism’s thoughts. In this way, I would call the work reflexive and the dance was a meta-dance. The work spoke of dancing and questioned how dances are made. The dances were top heavy. I already wanted to transcend structure and language, but only when I danced myself the work I could achieve it. Not through the group work.

2) The solo and group work I have done from 2000 to the present day where there is a clear shift away from post-structuralism and a move towards empathy and the issues of “affect” as understood and presented by Brian Massumi. I have allowed myself to focus on the emotional body, to expose the body in movement as dance and not as “only movement”, to dance to the music, to break the forth wall. In this way the work stopped speaking about the work to begin to speak about and consider the audience, the viewer. All my structural knowledge and interests have not disappeared. It just happened that I was ready to make “my” next step and expose myself as an artist more bluntly and perhaps less intellectually. This is the phase I am in and there is lots to do.

So, what do I do?

Hereunder how I have described to the press my last 2 choreographies (April 2005 and May 2005)

Ereignis presents itself to the audience as an opening for reflection and dream. The dancer, the visible and tangible protagonist , navigates through a predetermined series of spaces and physical actions. These spaces and actions are present-tense luminous points, situated in a much larger matrix of thought, remembered or projected.
(Ereignis is a 8 minute solo)

Anangke is a choreographic study conceived for and commissioned by SEAD. It is highly inspired by the works of Caravaggio (1573-1610) . It is a journey from flesh to word, from abstraction to reference, from the vertical to the horizontal plane, where physical details configure themselves into zones of poetic allusion. Anangke presents the human body as central and essential. The human body as the ultimate technology for communication. It is also a piece informed by the original compositions of Hilary Jefferey , an English trombone player and composer.
(Anangke is a 23 minute piece on 14 dancers)

When my dances work they speak of the human condition. Love, war, madness, presence and absence, space and the lack thereof, time and memory. They create a parenthesis in peoples minds and hearts. The duration of my performances, for the audience, go beyond the actual time the audience spends in the theater space.
I want to bridge the mental, physical and emotional.
I want my dances, through the dancers, to horizontally speak to the audience in such a way that both dancers and audience create an axis of vertical connection. One is elevated.
I want the movements of my dances to be vortices of power and the dancers to both control and obey the imagery they embody.
The dancers are both masters and slaves.
When the dancers have come to this point, the work of the choreographer is over and the dancers own the dance.

What kind of dance do I make?

My dances are formal dances. They make use of an inclusive range of movement codes and histories and they present a choreographic point of view that critiques post-modernity in general and the so called reflexive/conceptual/critical choreographies of the last 15 years in particular.
My dances are “of this time” for I believe they speak of issues relevant to people who live now in a well informed and crafted manner.

Who is my competition?

My main competition are the choreographers who make use of conceptual constructs to both create choreographic structures and promote the work itself , but do not see the body in movement as central. They are the “Don’t dance” and “Don’t seduce” choreographers.
I see them as my competition because they are the choreographers being showcased in most contemporary dance festival in Europe and therefore whose work gets to be seen by larger audiences. (I would like to have my work seen by many more people that what in the present happens).
My ideal audience, as mentioned before, is an audience who can relate and understand concepts AND appreciate good and beautiful dancing. An audience of “intellectuals with a heart”.

* Concerning competition, I am somehow confused. I am not sure where exactly I would like to base my work. The Netherlands, Germany, Europe, South America?
A dream I have is be to be half of the time in Brazil and half of the time in Europe.

How do my audiences profit from my artistic work?

My audiences would see dancing of a high quality, where form and content are fused.
My audiences would experience work that brings together mind , body and spirit in one experience.
My audiences would experience work that opens space for thinking and dreaming.
My audience would also come in touch with work that creates space for new memories.

....to be continued and improved....

2005-08-26T18:59:00.000+02:00

Joao and Ayara

2005-08-26T18:57:00.000+02:00

Felix and Joao

More on Berlin

2005-08-26T18:55:00.000+02:00

Ayara and Felix

Another time

2005-08-23T17:40:00.000+02:00

An intervention
an interrogation
a visitation
a parenthesis.

A space of partial nothingness
an invention of self.

A reinvention of self.

An obstacle without intention
a gap in our imaginary
and
I say
to you
that there is
no more time to waist
and
you reply
silently
that what I say
to you
is pure and simple
non sense.

An eruption
an implosion

What is left
is a fragment of body
to be
nibbled on.

Berlin

2005-08-22T18:53:00.000+02:00

Ayara and me in the afternoon sun in Ayara's flat in Kreuzberg.
I have let my beard grow to an extent I had never done before. Some say I look more latino this way.
The glasses are a sign of the 40's.

On the beach

2005-08-18T11:14:00.000+02:00

This is one of the things one does when one goes on a beach holiday. The picture depicts one of the rare windless moments when one could actually lie down without getting sand being blown into every facial orifice!

Provisory home

2005-08-18T11:07:00.000+02:00

Here we are, in our provisory but comfortable home in Narbonne Plage, a very french and extremely windy beach. The walks on the beach early in the morning were superb. From Narbonne beach one can see the Pyrenees. We have spent an afternoon in Perpignan, a city on the Catalan border.

Montpellier

2005-08-18T10:59:00.000+02:00

The young women and me in Montpellier, a lovely city. Definitely a place to return to with a bit more time. Amazing light everywhere. I even bumped into a small shop with brazilian products. I had been looking for ages for a pair of Capoeira pants. Lucky me, I finally found them.
For more information on Montpellier