© Pietro Bertora
Life is not useful (or It is what it is) and Matamatá
Life is not useful (or it is what it is) and Matamatá form a diptych. This diptych is the production of two choreographic works that complement and complexify each other, like two photographic images placed side by side. Diptych is a project at the crossroads of theatre, dance, literature and visual arts, consisting of a piece for three performers (Matamatá) and a solo conference (Life is not useful or It is what it is). It is the deployment of my infinite search towards and around the marvellous. Faced with the zeitgeist of our time, the climate catastrophe, the imminent death of the largest tropical forest on the planet and other challenges, as a choreographic artist I ask myself: Will we be able to reforest/replant, to become a forest with our bodies and our cities, how are we going to find joy and pleasure and not fall into melancholic and eco-climatic anguish? How can we make a dance to delay the end of a world? We start from bodily fabulations to perhaps make the audience’s thoughts dance.
Life is not useful or It is what it is In the search for philosophical and choreographic insight around the marvellous, Bruno Freire came across Ailton Krenak, one of the most important political voices of contemporary Brazil, a recent member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, professor honoris causa in two different universities, an indigenous militant and Brazilian philosopher. His publication “Life is not useful”, a critique of contemporary urban society, is the starting point for this danced lesson. Krenak argues that ‘life is an experience of wonderment’. This phrase keeps haunting Freire’s mind, becoming his mantra. In this performance, the choreographer rereads and interprets Krenak’s texts to understand them in depth while his body moves following the sound and the meanings of the words as if they were musical scores, inviting the audience to listen and reflect on them together.
Matamatá What if Descartes or Spinoza had visited the Brazilian rainforest? Brazilian poet Paulo Leminski’s Catatau poem or romance-idea is based on this dream of a philosopher confronted with another environment that bankrupts his thoughts. Arriving at the Atlantic mata where everything is astonishing, where there is an abundant profusion of life, where the heat and thoughts of the beasts transform what constitutes their bodies; three dancers whisper, sing and eat . A blend of voices, gestures and bodies sharing a stage that becomes the forest of our unconscious.
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Life is not useful or It is what it is
Concept, choreography & performance Bruno Freire
Light design Laura Salerno
Sound design Tomas Monteiro
Provocations Cristian Duarte, Ana Teixeira
Traduction from portugues helped by
Dramaturgy feedbacks and text adaptation Roz Whytes (english), Anna Czapski (french)
Matamatá
Concept & choreography Bruno Freire
Performers Robson Ledesma, Magdelaine Hodebourg Annabel Reid
Kempo training Thiago Antunes
Sound design Ricardo Vincenzo
Light design Felipe Boquimpani
Costumes+Makeup Stef Assandri
Dramaturgy Rodrigo Batista
Provocations Ana Teixeira
Production Stephanie Bouteille, Pierre-Laurent Boudet, Thomas Frabolot for Entropie Production
Executive Production La Balsamine
Coproduction La Balsamine, Charleroi Danse - centre chorégraphique de Wallonie-Bruxelles, La Cigalière, La Coop asbl, Shelter Prod, With the support of Service de la Danse de la Fédération Wallonie - Bruxelles, Wallonie-Bruxelles International, European Union - Culture Moves Europe, Wallonie Bruxelles Théâtre-Danse, taxshelter.be, ING, Tax Shelter du Gouvernement fédéral belge Residencies Festival International BAM (Siby/Bamako - Mali), WorkspaceBrussels, KRAAK Santarcangelo International Festival (It), La Cigalière (Sérignan - Fr), BUDA Kunstencentrum (Courtrai - Be) , Théâtre VARIA (Be)
Acknowledgements Tarina Quelho, Thiago Alixandre, Calixto Neto, Breno Caetano, Zé Fernando, Louise Cardon & Cao Guimarães
Crédits
Bruno Freire
Bruno Freire is still looking for the ___.
He is an artist, choreographer and researcher. He graduated from the University Paul Valéry III at the ICI-CCN of Montpellier in France with a project around the marvelous and Latin American Baroque. Before, he also did a master’s degree in Communication and Semiotics (2010-2012), and he graduated in dance and performance in Communication and Arts of the Body (2005-2009) both at PUC-São Paulo. Since then, he keeps an interest by practicing writing that could be able to perform its sobjects / ubjects.
In the last years, he has been dancing in choreographic pieces by Mette Ingvarsten (BE/DK), Radouan Mriziga (BE/MA) and Cristian Duarte (BR). In Brazil, he followed the center for dance studies CED, organized by Helena Katz (2008-2013), Lote 24h by the choreographer Cristian Duarte (2011-2013), project 7x7 by Sheila Ribeiro (2009-2014), Archeology of the Future by Thelma Bonavita and Cristian Duarte (2010), among others.
During his professional and academic life, he collects various artistic practices and training, such as spinning, melting, and lindy hopping with Mette Ingvarsten, walking and talking with Laurent Pichaud, carnavalizing with Calixto Neto, cleaning with Toshi Tanaka, running with Helena Katz, dancing without explanations with Manon Santkin, letting it all out and mashing-it-up with Cristian Duarte, doing things with words with Sheila Ribeiro, disseminating with Daniel Fagundes, drawing with Luis Garay, planning with Radouan Mriziga, spend time with Alva Noë, juicing words with Júlia Rocha, clubbing with Thiago Granato, re-enacting with Mathilde Monnier and Christophe Wavelet, transforming with Thelma Bonavita, laughing with Antonia Baehr and La Ribot, speaking and writing automatically with Miguel Gutierrez, reading with Wagner Schwartz, non-stop dancing with DDorvillier, what if with Debora Hay, moving for nothing with Paz Rojo, strongly questioning and weakly dancing with Jonathan Burrows, opening the holes of the body with Benoît Lachambre, swimming with David Zambrano, little deaths with Vera Sala, disappearing with Marta Soares, contracting with Gabi Imparato, improvising on Klauss Vianna with Zélia Monteiro and Neide Neves, telepathically dancing (with) Loïc Touzé, …