IP Collegium: Vera Mantero
COLLEGIUM: VERA MANTERO
May 20–24, 2019, Bucharest
registration deadline: March 8, 2019
IP—The Institute of the Present introduces COLLEGIUM—a new layer of action within its educational programme centred on the artists’ engagement with pedagogy and other forms of reflection upon the process of working. With each edition conceived in the form of a week-long workshop for professionals from Romania and the countries of Eastern Europe, COLLEGIUM puts forward a knowledge-resource space, advocating for a confrontational field featuring a variety of practices of performance and visual arts, which facilitates an unmediated contact with leading personalities and landmark moments of the international art scene. The Institute puts artists at the core of its endeavour, generating new formats for encountering, displaying and experiencing their work, while opening the artists’ laboratory to interested professionals in the fields of performing and visual culture.
VERA MANTERO: THE THINKING BODY—Composition/Interpretation Workshop
Vera Mantero’s working process reflects her understanding of the world and dwells upon a deep connection with her beliefs and her philosophical and political views. “The Thinking Body” workshop is part of her teaching format for composition and improvisation. “For me, dance is not a given fact. I believe that the less I acquire it, the closer I will be to it. I use dance and performance work to understand what I need to understand. I don’t see any sense anymore in a performer specialised in a single discipline (a dancer or an actor or a singer or a musician) and I now see some sense in a performer specialised in the whole. Life is a terribly complicated and rich phenomenon and I see the work I do as a continuous fight against the impoverishment of the spirit, both mine and others, a fight that I consider essential now and always.
Relaxation, the use of voice, writing, breathing and free association are some means to be used in this workshop in order to find the movements and actions going on inside. We will explore some of them separately first in order to incorporate them later in longer and more complex improvisational processes. The idea of getting inside a particular state of consciousness will be very important. Awareness and use of space, and the exploration of objects and materials will not be forgotten. Irony and empty hands will take us further.”
VERA MANTERO (b. 1966, Lisbon) studied classical dance until she was eighteen and danced in the Gulbenkian Ballet in Lisbon for five years. She started choreographing in 1987 and her first works, as noted by theoretician André Lepecki, captured the attention of Portuguese critique in a time when the movement of Nova Dança Portuguesa [New Portuguese Dance] started, growing from the post-fascist, post-colonial history of Portugal, being composed of a heterogeneous group of choreographers from Mantero’s generation. From 1991, with the famous “Perhaps she could dance first and think afterwards”, her pieces were presented internationally. Among her best known performances are the solos “one mysterious Thing, said e.e.cummings*” (1996), “What can be said about Pierre” (2011), “The Caldeirão Highlanders, exercises in fictional anthropology” (2012), and the group pieces “Under” (1993), “For Boring and Profound Sadnesses” (1994), “Poetry and Savagery” (1998), “k(ɘ) su’pɔɾtɐ i s(ɘ)ˈpaɾɐ i kõˈtɐj uʃ dojʃ mu’duʃ i õ’dulɐ” (2002), “Until the moment when God is destroyed by the extreme exercise of beauty” (2006), “We are going to miss everything we don’t need” (2009), “The Clean and The Dirty” (2016) and “The Propitiatory Practices of Future Events” (2018). The piece “Eating your Heart Out” co-created with sculptor Rui Chafes represented Portugal at the São Paulo Biennial in 2004. www.orumodofumo.com
DETAILS AND REGISTRATION
The workshop is open to performers, dancers and choreographers from Romania and the countries of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Professionals interested are requested to fill in a short application form available at https://goo.gl/forms/RCVkSf7IG0aJ2MSq1 by March 8, 2019. A total of 16 applicants shall be invited to participate in the workshop, and all applicants shall be notified about their application status by March 18, 2019.
The registration fee for confirmed participants is 240 Ron or 50 Euro. Accommodation in Bucharest will be secured for a limited number of foreign participants and for Romanian professionals not based in Bucharest. The workshop will take place on May 20-24, each day between 10:00–14:00, in Bucharest, travelling and accommodation dates for foreign participants will be May 19-25. For more information, contact ip@institutulprezentului.ro.
The workshop is accompanied by an artist talk given by Vera Mantero on May 23, in the frame of Looking Forward, Looking Back lecture series of the Institute of the Present.
COLLEGIUM is organised in 2019 in the frame of the project Presence, Ritual, Affect: Towards an Anthropology of Movement. Partners: Linotip—Independent Choreographic Centre, CEREFREA/ Villa Noël, Rezidenţa BRD Scena9/ Fundaţia9.
Photograph from “The Caldeirão Highlanders, exercises in fictional anthropology” (2012) by Humberto Araújo. Communication design: Sebastian Pren.
Cultural project co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund.
The project does not necessarily represent the standpoint of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN cannot be held liable for the content of the project or the manner in which the outcomes of the project may be used. These shall devolve entirely on the beneficiary of the financing.