from afar it was an island. De perto uma pedra / de longe era uma ilha. From up-close a stone

Concept and direction: João Fiadeiro

Co-direction: Leonardo Mouramateus and Carolina Campos

Performance and co-creation: Carolina Campos, Adaline Anobile, Márcia Lança (replacing Nuno Lucas), Iván Haidar and Julián Pacomio

Real time sound composition : João Bento

Lights: Leticia Skrycky

Space: João Fiadeiro – based on the scenic space of From Afar It Was An Island by Nadia Lauro (scenography), Gabriela Forman (costumes) and Bruno Bogarim (props).

Executive production: Sinara Suzin

Co-production (From afar it was an island): Alkantara, Festival DDD, Teatro Viriato, Teatro Avenida, Centre National de la Danse

Co-production (De perto, uma pedra): Temps d’Image, Atelier REAL

Support: Câmara Municipal de Lisboa / Polo Cultural Gaivotas_Boavista

“From afar it was an island” was financed by DGArtes

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Veronika: What a strange way to make the bed.

Alexandre: I saw it in a film. That’s what films are for. To learn how to live, to learn how to make a bed.

The Mother and the Whore, by Jean Eustache

 

“De perto, uma pedra” (“From close up, a stone”) completes the phrase that could have been written by Bruno Munari after “From afar it was an island“, the title of a book that he wrote for children, and from where João Fiadeiro “borrowed” the name for the show he opened at the DDD18 Festival in Porto (commissioned by the Alkantara Festival).

This movement of re-visiting, in an “in situ” environment, a work originally designed for the stage, is an increasingly recurring practice in João Fiadeiro´s approach to creation. To retake and reassemble the same material, but now in an “unplugged” version, freeing it from the tyranny of the narrative, which the theatrical apparatus requires. His objective is also to offer the public an experience closer to the one a “visitor” would have, allowing an immersion and an involvement that the condition of “spectator” doesn’t welcome as organically. As if, in order to eliminate the expectation from the spectators it’s necessary to remove them from the “assigned place” (fixed, immovable and inert) which the audience normally occupies.

What we propose with “De perto, uma pedra. From up close, a stone“ is exactly what the phrase suggests: allow the spectator/visitor to look up close (and within) a work that was originally designed to be seen from afar (and from outside). In order to extract, from the island, a stone. That stone isn’t more nor less precious than the island from which it was removed. It is not part of a whole. It is a whole. Therefore, it doesn’t aim to explain, justify or illustrate the island-work. It simply aims to reaffirm (as Munari suggests) that all things are what they are (or what they become) depending on the perspective and scale in which we experience them.

 

Photo by Alipio Padilha

“De perto uma pedra” is choreographed with gestures stored by cinema, all “written” with these “words”, and with the tension that is kept inside these fragments. A set of more than a hundred films from which people who dress, walk, stop, wait, talk…were extracted. The raccord (match cut), common to cinematic language, is  the principle capable of articulating relations between these gestures: someone fills a glass of water on their kitchen table CUT TO another someone who drops a glass of vodka on the bar counter. On the editing table, the raccord that would unify these two gestures would not hide the space and temporal jump that separates the two scenes, which may even be from two different films. In theater, however, we have the space and temporal unity of the stage, and we have the body that appropriates itself of the characters and unites the two scenes, without us noticing the exact moment in which one scene ends and another one begins. Gestures accumulate, the future is not predictable, and the past is not written. Gestures are contained in the present of their own presence, and yet they continue. In “De perto uma pedra” the gesture fixed by cinema is possessed by the phantom of the gesture of dance: oblivion.”

Leonardo Mouramateus

 

Document of the performance edited “side by side” with some of the filmes used to extract the gestures.

 

Compilation of the five “cinematographic scripts” that each dancer used to create their individual choreography.

 

List of filmes used to make the cinematographic scripts:

A Falecida, Brasil, 1965, Leon Hirszman

Aksharaya, 2005, Sri Lanka, Asoka Handagama

Al primo sopro di viento, Italia, 2002, Franco Piavoli

Angst vor der Angst, Alemanha, 1975, Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Aurora, 1927, EUA, F. W. Murnau

Banshun, Japão, 1949, Yasujiro Ozu

Benilde ou A Virgem Mãe, 1975, Portugal, Manoel de Oliveira

Bungalow, 2002, Alemanha, Ulrich Köhler

Camp de Thiaroye, 1988, Senegal, Ousmane Sembene

Catene, Itália, 1949, Raffaello Mattarazzo

Certain Women, 2016, EUA, Kelly Reichardt

Christine, UK, 1987, Alan Clarke

Chungking Express, 1994, Hong-Kong, Wong Kar-Wai

Dead Ringers, 1988, Canadá, David Cronenberg

Dial M for Murder, 1954, EUA, Alfred Hitchcock

Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant, 1972, Alemanha, Rainer Werner Fassbinder

El Camino, Espanha, 1963, Ana Mariscal

El Castillo de la pureza, 1972, México, Arturo Ripstein

El Dirigible, Uruguai, 1994, Pablo Dotta

El Espíritu de la Colmena, 1973, Espanha, Victor Erice

En la ciudad de Sylvia, 2008, Espanha, José Luis Guerín

Ensayo de un crimen, México, 1955, Luis Buñuel

Evariste Galois, 1967, França, Alexandre Astruc

Faces, EUA, 1968, John Cassavetes

Film, EUA, 1965, Alan Schneider & Samuel Beckett

Filme Demência, 1986, Brasil, Carlos Reichenbach

Gamperaliya, 1963, Sri-Lanka, Lester James Peries

Gishiki, 1971, Japão, Nagisa Oshima

Gli occhi, la bocca, 1982, Itália, Marco Bellocchio

Idi i smotri, Rússia, 1985, Elem Klimov

Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto, 1970, Itália, Elio Petri

Je vous salue Marie, 1985, França, Jean-Luc Godard

Juan Moreira, 1973, Argentina, Leonardo Favio

Juízo, Brasil, 2007, Maria Augusta Ramos

Kōhī Jikō, Japan/Taiwan, 2003, Hou Hsiao-Hsien

Krylya, 1966, Rússia, Larisa Shepitko

L’ Aventura, Itália, 1960, Michelangelo Antonioni

La Coquille et le clergyman, França, 1928, Germaine Dulac

La Folie de Almayer, França, 1991, Chantal Akerman

La Libertad, Argentina, 2001, Lisandro Alonso

La Notte, 1961, Italia, Michelangelo Antonioni

La notti dei diavoli, 1972, Itália, Giorgio Ferroni

La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV, 1966, França, Roberto Rossellini

La ragazza con la valigia, 1960, Itália, Valerio Zurlini

Last Days, 2005, EUA, Gus Van Sant

Le Livre de Marie, França, 1985, Anne-Marie Miéville

Le Mirage, França, 1991, Jean-Claude Guiguet

Les amants réguliers, França, 2005, Philippe Garrel

Les rendez-vous d’Anna, 1978, França, Chantal Akerman

Los Muertos, Argentina, 2004, Lisandro Alonso

M, Alemanha, 1931, Fritz Lang

Matka Joanna od Aniołów, Polônia, 1961, Jerzy Kawalerowicz

Messidor, 1979, Suíça/França, Alain Tanner

Monte Carlo, EUA, 1930, Ernst Lubitsch

Mr. Klein, 1976, França, Joseph Losey

My Brother’s Wedding, 1983, EUA, Charles Burnett

Naked Dawn, 1955, EUA, Edgar G. Ulmer

Nattvardsgästerna, Suécia, 1963, Ingmar Bergman

Near Dark, 1987, EUA, Kathryn Bigelow

Never Fear, 1949, EUA, Ida Lupino

Oasis, Coréia do Sul, 2002, Lee Chang-Dong

O caso dos Irmãos Naves, 1967, Brasil, Luiz Sérgio Person

O Fantasma, 2000, Portugal, João Pedro Rodrigues

O Sangue, Portugal, 1989, Pedro Costa

O Som da Terra a Tremer, Portugal, 1990, Rita Azevedo Gomes

O Território, 1981, Portugal, Raúl Ruiz

O Viajante, Brasil, 1999, Paulo César Saraceni

Palavra e Utopia, Portugal, 2000, Manoel de Oliveira

Pandora’s Box, 1930, Alemanha, G. W. Pabst

Permanent Vacation, 1980, EUA, Jim Jarmusch

Phenomena, 1985, Itália, Dario Argento

Planet of the vampires, 1965, Itália, Mario Bava

Possession, 1981, França, Andrzej Żuławski

Procès de Jeanne d’Arc, França, 1962, Robert Bresson

Proshu Slova, 1976, Rússia, Gleb Panfilov

Qingshaonian Nezha, 1992, Taiwan, Tsai Ming-Liang

Recordações da Casa Amarela, 1989, Portugal, João César Monteiro

Rope, 1948, EUA, Alfred Hitchcock

Río escondido, México, 1948, Emílio Fernandez

Samba Trouré, Burkina Faso, 1992, Ouedraogo

Sans toit ni loi, 1985, França, Agnés Varda

Schwarze Sunde, Alemanha, 1990, Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet

Steaming, 1985, UK, Joseph Losey

Suna no Onna, Japão, 1964, Hiroshi Teshigahara

Série Noire, 1979, França, Alain Corneau

Tabiate bijan, Irã, 1974, Sohrab Shahid Saless

Tau ban no hoi, Hong Kong, 1982, Ann Hui

Terra em transe, 1967, Brasil, Glauber Rocha

The Heartbreak Kid, 1972, EUA, Elaine May

The New York Ripper, 1992, Itália, Lucio Fulci

The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, EUA, 1927, Ernst Lubitsch

The Territory, 1981, Portugal, Raúl Ruiz

Two friends, 1986, Austrália, Jane Campion

Ugetsu Monogatari, 1953, Japão, Kenji Mizoguchi

Ukigumo, Japão, 1955, Mikio Idrissa Naruse

Underworld U.S.A., 1961, EUA, Samuel Fuller

Uri Seonhui, 2013, Coréia do Sul, Hong Sang-Soo

US GO Home, França, 1994, Claire Denis

Vargtimmen, Suécia, 1968, Ingmar Bergman

Vidas Secas, 1963, Brasil, Nelson Pereira dos Santos

Vive L’amour, 1994, Taiwan, Tsai Ming-Liang

Vivre Sa vie, França, 1962, Jean-Luc Godard

Zhantai, China, 2000, Jia Zhangke

Él, 1953, México, Luis Buñuel

Últimos días de la víctima, 1982, Argentina, Adolfo Aristarain