EXI(s)T(s)
Mariana Tengner Barros

Sinopsis

EXI(s)T(S) seeks to develop the relationship between fiction and reality, through the interplay of the senses, its main premise being the idea of a black hole, what this can bring to mind at the level of our collective imagination, and the perception of the human being.

This performance was conceived to go beyond the conventional format of the relationship between the spectator and the presented work. Instead of the traditional positioning of the audience in the stalls, in the dark, watching something that is lit up on the stage, we invite spectators to transform their role in this equation. By challenging their exploration of the space, their way of watching the performance, it becomes possible to adopt different perspectives about the materials presented. The levels of experience that the audience may have in this encounter will be explored, with there ceasing to be a “stage”, where we are all is on the same plane, the final place of transition, a place between worlds. In this project, we also include the search for unconventional spaces for performances (warehouses, factories) with the aim of questioning the conventional architecture for the presentation of shows and the use of multimedia tools. The space is expanded so that the materials of the itinerary–dance–flow can be organically followed, and so that we can wander through the seductive world of the elements, in a dance of lights/videos/figures/entities. Instead of spectators, let us think of explorers, witnesses and cosmic travellers. We want these explorers to leave their belongings, possessions, extras behind, on the quayside or in the cloakroom, and to enter into the space free from any connections to the everyday world. Through the use of various performative elements, multi-sensory universes are recreated to transform the experience, and open multiple doors of perception onto the abyss of the unknown. This is the space of discovery, the unlikely place without any physical separation between audience and performers, the territory where individual itineraries are experienced by psychedelic bodies that flow in non-linear narratives about the universe,  infinity and the different worlds. Fragments of stories, a patchwork of fiction. What makes the real different from the fictional? The structures of the prevailing power. And all the stories that were not recorded in History are there somewhere, in that place where Giordano Bruno can dance alongside Joan of Arc.

EXI(s)T(s) was born from the collaboration between artists from a variety of different contexts: dance, electronic music, African percussion and the visual arts. This work is intended to afford continuity to the artistic research undertaken in recent years by A BELA Associação, particularly in the work directed by the choreographer Mariana Tengner Barros. This research seeks to explore formats for performance that reformulate the quality of the spectator’s attention, creating dramaturgical lines where, at the same time, the multiplicity of information about the concept of the work is also presented.

Here, the dance is consciousness, a relationship that transcends the bodies and which is built between the elements involved.

Sinopsis