Poetry and Savagery by Vera Mantero, 1998
Premiered in 1998 as part of Festival Mergulho no Futuro, in the Small Auditorium of Centro Cultural de Belém, Poetry and Savagery is one of Vera Mantero's most emblematic creations. The piece stems from amazement at the human condition – the ability to create the sublime alongside the brutal – and asserts itself as a search for freedom through the body. A body stripped of codes, open to the unknown, moving with the naivety of a primordial being, discovering itself, others and the world. On stage, a group of performers inhabit a space of sensitive transgression, proposing a ‘positive savagery’: a state of instinctive listening, where new ways of existing and communicating are experienced, beyond words. The physical proximity to the audience invites a more direct and visceral involvement. ‘We are people trapped in our bodies. We are sedentary, cerebral, we communicate mainly through words,’ says Mantero. This play is, above all, an invitation to liberation.
Freedom. Immanence.
(from where did I get this idea of freedom?)
Freedom as availability to vibrations, availability to hear them and availability to accomplish them in some way. To hear these vibrations inside us, to embrace them, opens an enormous field of possibilities, creates the energy to construct, gives a sense of meaning, meaning to do things, or energy itself creates the meaning.
I like this idea, energy itself creates the meaning.
I think that freedom is what makes it possible to enter immanence.
Probably without freedom it could not be entered.
It must be why I am always falling back on the idea of abandonment, the idea of abandonment and openness and all the related items.
Vera Mantero
Credits
Direction
Vera Mantero
Performers and co-creation
Nuno Bizarro, Ana Sofia Gonçalves, Vera Mantero, Margarida Mestre, Frans Poelstra, Christian Rizzo
Artistic Assistance
Lília Mestre
Set
Nadia Lauro
Costumes
Nadia Lauro and all the staf
Light Design
Cathy Olive
Props and Stage
Marta Rego
Sound Track
Christian Rizzo
Sound Design
Rui Dâmaso
Executive Production
EIRA / Delphine Goater / O Rumo do Fumo
Co-producers
Instituto Português de Artes e Espectáculos / Centro Cultural de Belém/ Mergulho no Futuro-Expo 98 e EIRA.
Sponsors
Centa, Casa de Mateus
Poetry and Savagery was commissioned by
Festival Mergulho no Futuro Expo9 and had its premiere in Lisbon on the 21st August 1998
Timeline
19 - 23 September 2001, Festival International de Nouvelle Danse, Montreal, Canada
28 - 30 May 2001, Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, France
28 October 2000, Teatro Carlos Gomes, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Miguel Pereira took part in this piece in place of Christian Rizzo)
26 October 2000,Teatro SESC Pompéia, São Paulo, Brazil (Miguel Pereira took part in this piece in place of Christian Rizzo)
2 - 3 July 2000, Festival Montpellier Danse, Montpellier, France
11 - 12 February 2000, Festival Danse(s) à Brest, Brest, Le Quartz, France
28 - 29 October 1999, Moving Mime Festival, Tilburg, Netherlands
16 October 1999, Dietheater, Vienna, Austria
13 September 1999, La Bâtie – Festival de Genéve, Geneva, Switzerland
18 - 19 August 1999, Internationales Tanzfest Berlin, TanzWerkstatt Berlin, Berlin, Germany
26 - 27 March 1999 , Month of March - Month of Vera, Culturgest, Lisbon, Portugal
7 May 1999, Kunst – und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik, Bonn, Germany
1998, Balleteatro, Porto, Portugal
Premiere - 21 - 22 August 1998, Festival Mergulho do Futuro, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Portugal