“From a supermarket carrier bag, products such as tissues, matches, cigarettes, tampons and sweets emerge. Products that we use freely every day without a second thought. They are a kind of second skin, more immediate garments than dresses, shoes or trousers. Products that are in fact destined to come into intimate contact with our skin and even to maintain a certain look and composure.

This is why their role in the game should not be minimised. This tragic performance brought onto the stage in a plastic bag tells us clearly that all of the products we use, from the most interesting to the most ordinary, contribute to the biography of the body – a product and a producer of landscapes, discourses and hierarchies separating North from South, adults from children, women from men and the living from the dead. Landscapes and discourses that identify this side in order to contrast it with that side.”

— Paula Caspão

Included in the dance not dance programme, this Cláudia Dias’ performance is presented on the same day as Olga Roriz’s performance Lágrima [Tear]. In the end, there is a talk with both artists, moderated by Teresa Joaquim.

These two choreographically disparate pieces are both markedly feminine or feminist, notwithstanding being two decades apart, a period in which women rights and living conditions in Portuguese society have changed significantly. This juxtaposition is intended to evoke emancipatory movements made evident by the presentation of female soloists and solo female dance performers in 20th-century Portugal and elsewhere. It also reveals the social issues at the heart of these and so many other artists’ work who questioned and fought to improve the position of women in western society. 

*Performance with full nudity

Image © Patrícia Almeida

dance not dance

This event is included in the (re)performances, films and talks series which constitutes the first part of dance not dance – archaeologies of the new dance in Portugal. More info.