Some stories. The public. The performer. A meeting point: the spectacle room. A space of expectation, of conviviality, of evasion, of creation. A space of shared codes and presences, of gliding temporalities and memories.

In the drawing Nada. Ello dirá. (Nothing. You shall see), where a corpse writes the word “Nada” [Nothing] on a tablet, the Spanish painter Goya alludes to the expectation towards death, the evasion from the material world and the absence of the divine, a void all people seemed destined to. A world without God, without beyond.

In a strangely similar way, the physical space of the theatre is associated to a series of expectations which also produces a certain beyond, a certain transposition of the reality, a shared illusion. In its specific case, two fields are instantaneously created, apparently apart, the one belonging to the performer who acts and the other to the spectator who enjoys it. Action and expectation as two sides of the same coin.

In English, the word room designates not only a sleeping chamber in a house, but also, according to the substantive that precedes it, a living room. It is the case of spectacle room. In this spectacle room, a choreography attains its material contours in the actions and movements of the performers.  In this same room, other “actors” join the situation through the mere presence and fulfillment of their specific role as watchers: the spectators. In his book, The distribution of the sensible, Jacques Rancière calls attention upon “the system of self- evident facts of sense perception that immediately discloses the existence of something in common and the delimitations that define the respective parts and positions within it”. He adds that “this apportionment of parts and positions is based on a distribution of spaces, times, and forms of activity that determines the very manner in which something in common lends itself to participation and in what way various individuals have a part in this distribution”.

Bearing this in mind, Nothing. We shall see, addresses the tacit rules that exist between performers and spectators in their sensible sharing of a common space: the spectacle room.  Rendering explicit these very codes and the attention regimes involved during a live dance performance, the piece promotes a game where the place of the performance as well as its actors are the result of a shared engagement and understanding among the two gliding fields it involves: the audience and the stage.

Video extract here.

Full video here.

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Nothing. We shall see was awarded Klauss Vianna Prize 2007/08 (Funarte) for research. Its première was at SESC Avenida Paulista, in São Paulo, February 2009. Its European première was on November 18th and 19th under the frame of the Festival Temps d´images, at Culturgest, Lisbon. The project was in residency at Le Centre International d´Accueil et d´Éxchanges Les Récollets (Paris, França), in partnership with CND-Pantin (Jul-Sep 2009).

conception and choreography 

Gustavo Ciríaco

co-creation | performance

Ignacio Aldunate, Francini Barros, Gustavo Ciríaco, Milena Codeço and Dyonne Boy

direction assistance and artistic collaboration 

Flavia Meireles

virtual dancer

Leo Nabuco

videos

Leo Nabuco, Gustavo Ciríaco and Ignacio Aldunate

light design

José Geraldo Furtado Gomes

sound track

Rodrigo Marçal – Aprx

teachers 

Flavia Meirelles, Maria Alice Poppe,  Renata Reiheimmer e Joelson Gusson

administration and executive production

Fomenta Produções – Carla Mullulo and João Braune

residencies

Centre International d’Accueil et d’Échanges Les Récollets / Paris

Ocupação Orquestra Improviso – Teatro Glaucio Gil (Rio de Janeiro)

co-production

SESC São Paulo

Culturgest – Lisbon

 

Paula Kossatz

Flavia Meireles