Free...space

To complain about the communication problem between the audience and contemporary dance is to state a platitude that is by now merely rhetorical. For Portuguese choreographer João Fiadeiro, for one, this is no matter for concern. “In a contemporary performance we are not going to confirm expectations but be confronted with something. We are in a territory of questioning, not entertaining,” he says unequivocally.

The Freedom of Creation

Let’s go a little further back in the story. Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, April 2002: the world premiere of “Existência.

” At one point in the performance, one of the performers defecates on stage. The Parisian arts scene, more than accustomed to excess, is forced to question the nature of freedom of creation. How far can you go? Can a performer do anything on stage? And can it still be called dance or theatre? In actual fact, these people were witnessing one of the key moments in a research and investigation project that João Fiadeiro calls “Composition in Real Time.” Not a creative method in the common meaning of the word, or a theory, or even a tool, “it is an apprenticeship,” Fiadeiro explains. “As a performer you should not act on an image you ...