BOCA COVA, 2024
en
Is it possible to keep the current social order without cannibalising nature? What is the limit to human insatiability? In BOCA COVA, four dancers form a gear-organism that moves through space. The opening and closing of their mouths is the engine of desire, the drilling of machines opening up the soil, the beat of a jackhammer. The audience is positioned around the action, on the edge of the void. In this piece, Michelle Moura continues her search for a physicality made of artificialities: gestures in repetition, voices modified by digital filters, words in vertigo. We see pieces of things that have been chewed up: cosmologies, narratives of creation and destruction, circular rites. Everything will be digested by the great mouth of the earth, serving as nourishment for an endless life that passes from body to body, recreates itself and continues.
pt
É possível continuar com a atual ordem social sem canibalizar a natureza? Qual o limite para a insaciabilidade humana? Em BOCA COVA, quatro dançarinas formam um organismo-engrenagem que avança pelo espaço. O abrir e fechar de suas bocas é o motor do desejo, o perfurar de máquinas abrindo a terra, o compasso de uma britadeira. O público se posiciona ao redor da ação, na borda de um grande vazio. Nesta peça, Michelle Moura continua a busca por uma fisicalidade feita de artificialidades: gestos que se repetem, vozes modificadas por filtros digitais, palavras em vertigem. Vemos pedaços de coisas que foram mastigadas: cosmologias, narrativas de criação e destruição, ritos circulares. Tudo será digerido pela grande boca da terra, servindo de alimento para uma vida sem fim, que passa de corpo a corpo, se recria e segue.
Artistic direction and choreography: Michelle Moura
With: Clarissa Rêgo, Isabela Fernandes Santana, Ixchel Mendoza Hernández, Rocío Marano
Dramaturgy & Choreographic assistance: Maikon K
Music & Sound design: Kaj Duncan David
Lighting design: Annegret Schalke and Hanna Kritten Tangsoo
Costume design: Thelma Bonavita
Vocal coaching: Atalya Tirosh
International distribution: Something Great
Production management: ehrliche arbeit – freelance office for culture
A production by Michelle Moura in co-production with Tanz im August / HAU Hebbel am Ufer (in cooperation with Sophiensaele) and PACT Zollverein. Funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.
The premiere is presented in co-operation with Sophiensæle.
Co-production and residency supported by FELD/LAB, a project by O Espaço do Tempo and the Goethe Institut Portugal.
With the kind support of the Danish Arts Foundation and Diorama Berlin.
Thanks to Elisabete Finger, Mateusz Szymanowka, Sophie Spiral Schultze-Allen, Maja Zimmermann, Jefta van Dinther, Jared Gradinger
Artist's note
A few years ago, I came across this phrase: "Insatiability that torments".
An endless hole, growing within each of us. The ever-present lack.
The colonial capitalist system as an unstoppable devourer, extracting the life force from all things and beings: turning the world into a product to be outdone. A system incapable of creating other realities, everything it consumes has the same insipid taste. Nothing satisfies it.
Is lack something inherent to the human condition, or is it produced and stimulated by capitalism? How do I disinfect myself from this insatiable system?
What is the difference between desiring and cultivating?
This work begins with the mouth: how to move and think from it. What is it capable of consuming and also creating? The opening and closing, the sounds, the expressions and sensations it activates. By looking more closely at this hole in the middle of the face, I began to recognize the act of eating as something complex, containing multiple relationships: nutrition and support; encounter with other beings and substances; metamorphosis, destruction, pleasure. The mouth as an alchemical portal of transformation.
And what does this mouth pursue? Is there something capable of fully satisfying it?
A dance produced from the connection with the digestive tract, movements of expelling and swallowing. A mouth in connection with the ground we tread. Feeling the world as this mouth that chews and swallows different materials, subjects, and beings. At this very moment, we are being digested: under the pressure of gravity, slowly cooked by time in the broth of elements.
This piece is a digestive tract that contracts in an attempt to expel another world, from the remnants of what is left.
BOCA COVA has premiered in the festival Tanz im August in cooperation with Sophiensaele Berlin.
Mayra Wallraff
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