Joao Fiadeiro: "Where Do the Lights Go..."

In João Fiadeiro’s works the process of decoding reality by choreographic means forms the basis of action that underlines the importance of registering and appropriating the context. This leads his artistic discourse to the careful and delicate coordination of accumulated experiences.

The problems that his pieces deal with are questions of representation: how to make something real that is artificial – because it's repeated, rehearsed, analysed – in relation to the reality or artificiality of the other?

Before “I am Here” (2003), based on the work of visual artist Helena Almeida, Fiadeiro created a two-part work entitled “Existência/Aicnêtsixe” (2001-2002), where he applied a method called Real Time Composition. But the lack of theoretical, practical and rational elements prevented him from addressing awareness of the other among the individual bodies on stage as a territory of risk. His ensemble pieces were never as succinct as his solos.

Now he seems to have partly solved that problem by exploring the effect that the moment of action and representation has on the inner logic of the choreography. The performance “Where Do the Lights Go when They're Switched off?” is seen through a ...