2003 | Do the parts speak of the whole? (Falam as partes do todo?)

This question came to my mind when a teacher told me about two possible ways of perceiving life – through the perspective of the forest or through the perspective of the tree. I think that for longtime I saw life through the perspective of the forest, I have pursued the idea of unity, of universal laws. Lately the world has been destroying the forests and I think I have started to lose my guarantees. It is not a very comfortable way of living, almost every day I face the desire of knowing what is right or wrong in order to guide my actions. Living without assurance is living in uncertainty, in a constant movement of learning again and again.

One day, a newspaper article of November 23rd, 2001, got to my hands, where president Bush made an ultimatum to the world population: “you are either for us or for the terrorists”. It seemed to me very urgent to think over this fundamentalist way of perceiving the world as a bidimensional reality. This point of view that establishes a partial perspective as the best, if not the only one; that intends to enclose the meaning of things; that sees versions as facts, the parts as the whole. This way of viewing that tempts us with its certainty, generalisations, definite explanations and flawless formulas.

When I got to know Tatiana Grinberg’s work, I thought she talked to and about the body in an open and ambiguous way, and she tackled the same issues I did. This project was born from this partnership and the gathering of the dancers, as a response to questions about body and space as realities that are built in relation one to each other.
Dani Lima

concept and direction: Dani Lima
creation: Alex Cassal, Clarice Silva, Dani Lima,
Edney D’ Conti, Monica Burity, Rodrigo Maia,
Vinicius Salles, Vivian Miller and André Masseno
objects: Tatiana Grinberg
direction assistant: Alex Cassal
original soundtrack: Felipe Rocha and Lucas Marcier
musical direction: Felipe Rocha
costumes: Valéria Martins
light: Paulo César Medeiros
dramaturgy: Mônica Prinzac

My works take place as flux, process and experimentation. They build themselves as a network of contact between bodies, objects, texts and ambience through recognition/strangeness situations. And by means of a succession of potentiation/anaesthetization of the senses, time's intricacies and the multiplication of spatial tensions search a new corporeality. It interests here the interactions, migrations, the occurred transformations, the changes, the marks.

When Dani invited me to take part in a group project, the creation of art objects especially for the spectacle was proposed. And the spectacle would be concerned with some ideas related to my research - sensorial experience, reflexivity, ambiguous spatiality, the changing places between observer and observed; with such themes as identity and authorship that interests Dani's company; as well as some questions we share - the use of the proprioception sense, body fragmentation, the presence of the spectator regarding his participation, the requirement of his/hers memory/oblivion, movement/interaction, the use of texts, etc.

What interests in this mix is the fact that the spectacle introduces some art objects that originated from themes and specific demands from the dancers and with which they interact in subtle dance; as well as some movements done without any art objects which were born out of concepts connected to my art work.
Tatiana Grinberg

The whole is never the sum of the parts, it is more than this. The parts can be all. The word and the body are always the parts and are always the whole. Is a torso of Apolo a part or is it the whole? How do you go from movement to dance? Where does the body end and where does the space begin?

The sculpture and the dance invent the body. The sculpture and the dance invent the space. Displacing. Weighing. Crossing. Separating. Joining. Going far apart. Coming close. Touching. Walking. The space is not outside, in front of us, it is not born as a geometric figure. It draws itself daily, beginning with the movement of our body and the experience of our gestures.

More than just a relationship between dance and sculpture, what we see in this performance is a displacing of languages, a metamorphosis of body into sculpture, of sculpture into dancing fragments. There are not a choreography and a scenography, there are bodies, shapes and spaces that reinvent themselves at each movement of the one who dances and of the one who watches and goes around. Tatiana’s sculptures exist through the dance, just like Dani’s choreographic design fragments itself and unfolds itself through the cuts and holes of the sculptured works.

Do the parts speak of the whole? Do we have words to express the body? Can we see without words? “There are plenty of things that are not said / there are plenty of things that exceed what we say / is our misery a joy of words?” A look, a gesture. a yes, can mean everything or nothing at all – the situation and the moment make the difference.
Luiz Camillo Osório