YESTERDAY´S TOMORROWS

What do you learn by opening your eyes? Where does our attention wander in curiosity about the world? From what is seen, what becomes knowledge, vertigo, mystery? From the eyes to the mouth, from the mouth to the word, from the word to the ear and again to the eyes, the world is processed and through it all of us as thinking, affective, sensitive matters. Immersed in the present, we cast anchors for the future.

Two pedagogical strategies of reference inspire this series of performances. Both have a common basis: learning as a practice for freedom. On the one hand, the German theorist Friedrich Froebel, inventor of the kindergarten and his use of play as a fundamental tool for learning about the materialities at work in the world. On the other, the renowned Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, who advocates a critical pedagogy in which the learner is considered a co-creator of knowledge.

The kindergarten was an educational initiative that emerged in Germany in 1837, which advocated the education of young children through creative, imaginative and spontaneous play. Through activities and games, the children’s environment and dynamics were introduced into the learning process. By emphasizing the act of doing rather than the verbal communication of things, Froebel argued that the mind grows through self- revelation, made possible by playful learning toys such as building blocks, balls with strings, magic cubes, which he called GIFTS, and by learning activities which he called OCCUPATIONS, such as weaving, drawing, folding paper, carving wood, sewing, kneading, among others. The gifts led the child to discover the materiality of things, their everyday unfolding, hence to insights, and the occupations led them to the very act of doing, its invention and mastery, hence to empowerment.

For Paulo Freire, education serves men and women to gain critical access to the immediate world in which they live, by adopting and using in his method the students’ own references and contexts as the basis of the teaching process. Through the literacy of impoverished adults, as a way of promoting human dignity for oppressed people, Freire defended the awareness of reading a word as reading the world. Paulo Freire criticised the idea that teaching is the transmission of knowledge. For him, the teacher is the one who enables the creation and production of knowledge. For him, it was a question of learning to read reality in order to be able to rewrite it. In a village in the Brazilian Northeast, Freire gathered together the most commonly used words in that locality as the basis for a literacy process. If we were to do the same, what words circumscribe us today?

GOD – PROMISE – WAR – DROUGHT – WHITE – BLACK – DISTANCE – INCREASE – SAD – COMMOTION – FEAR – FIRE – COURAGE – CONFINE – END – BREATH – DESIRE – END – LIVE – DEAD – ZOOM

In order to poetically interconnect dance with these two pedagogical universes and examine the principles that shape and build knowledge, YESTERDAY ́S TOMORROWS seeks to dive into the practical knowledge present in everyday life – such as the acts of sweeping, estimating, organizing, walking, holding a conversation – that reveal the bases of our everyday knowledge in order to generate a possible translation and articulation between these two approaches, examining both how the perception of the materiality of the world operates through its manipulation and how one’s socio-cultural context shapes and informs the individual.

Between the vertigo of the unknown and the lucidity of manipulating matter, how do we process this today, the future of a past made present, this tomorrow of yesterday?

Dates

Festival Singular. Castelo Branco, Portugal. November 30th, 2024.

Encontros Gymnasium – Mostra de Artes para Publico Jovem, Lagos, Portugal. October 3rd, 2024.

PREMIÈRE. Bienal de Artes Performativas de Amarante, Amarante, Portugal. June 9-10, 2024.

Artistic residency. Espaço do Tempo, Montemor-o-Novo. June 2024.

Creative lab. Gymnasium, Lagos, Portugal. April 16-19th, 2024.

Creative lab. Independence Dance, London. April 11, 12 and 13th, 2024.

Creative lab. Escapa, Amarante. March 25-29, 2024.

Artistic residency. And LAB, Lisbon. February 26 – March 1st, 2024.

Artistic residency. Casa de Dança de Almada, Almada. February 19-23, 2024

Artistic residency & creative lab. MAAT – CCDC, Cairo. December 2-17, 2023. Public presentation: Access Gallery, Dec 16.

Creative lab. Gymnasium, Lagos. 6-10 November, 2023.

Artistic residency. And LAB, Lisbon. October 30 – Nov 3, 2023

Artistic residency. Largo Residências, Lisbon. August 7-11, 2023.

Artistic residency. VAGA, Ponta Delgada. November 6-13, 2022. Public sharing: November 12th.

Creative lab – Festival Futurama, Beja. Presentation. May, October 7th, 2022

Artistic residency. Materiais Diversos, Lisbon. September 12-23, 2022.

Creative lab – UNS COM OS OUTROS. Palácio Alegre Alegrete, Lisbon. August 16 – September 8, 2022. Presentations: September 9-11.

Creative lab. Futurama, Beja. May, June and September, 2022.

Creative lab. Palácio Alegre Alegrete, Lisbon. October 2021.

Creative lab. Centro de Dança de Brasília. Brasília, Brazil. February 1 & 2, 2020.

Creative lab. Festival Verão Azul, Loulé, Portugal. October 27th, 2019.

Artistic direction and choreography 

Gustavo Ciríaco

Performers and collaborators  

Lewis Seivwright, Joana Levi, Sara Zita Correia and Tiago Barbosag

Guest artists

Filipe Caldeira, Mariana Costa

Set and objects design

Ali Talaat

Original soundtrack 

Ricardo Gomes

Administration and financial management 

Missanga Antunes

Residencies

Vaga – Espaço de Arte e Conhecimento (Ponta Delgada), Materiais Diversos & Escola Superior de Dança (Lisbon), Espaço do Tempo (Montemor-o-Novo), And_LAB (Lisbon), Casa de Dança de Almada (Almada), Cairo Choreographic Dance Centre (Cairo), Gymnasium (Lagos)

Co-producers

Espaço do Tempo, Gymnasium

Funding

Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian 2022

Fundação GDA 2023

 

Photos Mariana Lopes (VAGA)