After the 2005 choreography “Levanta os Braços como Antenas para Céu”, Clara Andermatt creates a new piece for Grupo Dançando Com a Diferença (based in the island of Madeira), this time accompanied by composer Jonas Runa.
In “Dez Mil Seres”, the creative process starts outside the studio, exploring a number of rural pathways in the island of Madeira, and exposing the group to the elements of Nature, in a search for new sensations, new details and a new perception of the landscape.
The personalities, limitations, and possibilities of each of the seven interpreters give shape to the piece. Mickaella Dantas has an amputated leg, Aléxis Fernandes has Asperger syndrome, Bárbara Matos, Rui Costa, Sofia Marote and Joana Caetano have Down syndrome, and Telmo Ferreira has been ambiguously diagnosed with socio emotional maladjustment.
For the piece, Andermatt summons the surrealism of authors like H. R. Giger and Jorge Luís Borges, the unsettling erotism of Balthus or Picasso’s Harlequins, to inform the movement and the interactions between the bodies, in an intense quest for a common language.
The stereogram that opens the performance unveils the details that are hidden under an apparent repetition.
“The first time I look, I see a plain pattern, repetitive, limited. I look again with more attention and I can see clearly, I enter a mysterious place where I find other forms and an infinite number of variations. I see the detail, the form, the filigree that emanates light. One needs time, space, tranquillity and a will to see…Now, inside that other place, I discover strange beings that enact actions that can only make sense through the imagination.”
Clara Andermatt (2012)