MARCIA MILHAZES AND HER ART OF SOPHISTICATION AND EXACTNESS

CRITIQUE

ANA VIANNA BATHES HER MOVEMENTS AS NATURALLY AS HER BREATHING

 

(HELENA KATZ)

Special for "O Estado de São Paulo"

 

GUARDE-ME

SESC Bom Retiro - Alameda Nothmann 185 ;  Sunda 14th, at 6 p.m.

Tickets R$ 6,00/R$ 12,00

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Do you know when something makes you feel another density where you did not even suspect it would be possible ?

That's it .

 

 

Guarde-me, Marcia Milhazes's new creation, on at SESC Bom Retiro , until this Sunday, 14th, makes us review the usual association Baroque-excesses. 

It teaches us that excess may lie in what falls silent, not in what blabbers too much. It helps us face the polyphonic times in which we live, with so many voices simultaneously shuffling communication. 

Guarde-me is organized around a silence which becomes so dense as to be unbearable. It materializes in Ana Amélia Vianna's danse. She has worked with Marcia Milhazes for 17 years and, in this latest work , bathes each one of her movements as naturally as her breathing. Her body bends like one which digs inside itself, to intertwine with Domênico Salvatore's body.  

Domênico needs that her hands touch his contour. They meet and stand away, spiraling movements as if they breathed in or out of something which urges to gain externalization, because it needs to be said , but these are hands which open not to reveal, but rather, to summon an inside. Hands and arms open the possibility for the entire body to gain volume and make Ana Amélia into a pendulum, with pointer legs tearing the space with straight lines , halting the sinuosities which spiral inside themselves.

The jacket, which, at every instant, is hanging on Ana Amélia, insists on being an "almost" which does not seem to fit any kind of adjustment. It entails a metaphor of what is there : it comprises and unbuilds as if it could neither set boundaries to Ana Amélia's body (because, actually, it not a body anymore, but rather a silence which becomes ever heavier) nor does Domênico's body. Probably, as the work moves on, we perceive that Ana Amélia is Domênico's inside which externalizes itself , and that, when the two hold hands, they neither bring together danses nor directions.

 

Domênico, although he has been only for 8 months professionally engaged with Marcia Milhazes, precisely tensions the gushes of movement he produces.

Many are the silences to make feelings emerge. Silences lined by unforeseen gestures , which seem like rhythmic sobs. If there a possibility of a graphic identification for Guarde-me , it would be that of the mathematical symbol of the infinite, the figure 8 on its side. This symbol brings together what is heard with what is seen in its two rings, which interlink as if they were not danse movements and musical sounds, but instead, aspects of the same understanding of the world.

The music which flows forth from conductor Eduardo Antonello (who also plays the clavichord), Roger Lagr (Baroque violin and vielle a roue), and Pedro Hausselmann (viola da gamba, flutes and bagpipe) is on stage as if saying that what is about to begin has already started quite before .  Music and danse, one attesting being the distension of the other, as both perform the same combination of what is scored with that which is added as improvised. Though, conversely, an improvisation fostered within the same structuring nature of what composes the score.

 

Music and danse in the repetition which confronts the affections impelling them .

 

Unlike in the previous choreographies, the stage, for once is not framed by any props, in a scene for Ana Amélia and Domênico to provide shape to .

It is worth noting that what  will take  up the stage also moves together with the breath and the wind of the movement.

 

At the beginning , Domênico bursts in, propelled by a force  which, at this moment, one does not know that comes from he himself. And, at the end, Ana Amélia comes in running and crosses the stage, as her wind knocks Domênico down.

The inside and the outside meet , so that the silence from which we ever try to escape, sets in.

 

On this Guarde-me, Marcia Milhazes lays her artificer's domain on her choreographic labor, bringing together sophistication and refinement with an exactness which bursts in all directions.

 

(LEGENDA DA FOTO)        SILENCE

To make feelings emerge and reflection find its place.