João Fiadeiro: Get re.al
You can read more about André Lepecki and his poetics as a writer on the following link: http://www.sarma.be/nieuw/critics/lepecki.htm
CREDITS
Editor Sarma: Myriam Van Imschoot
Editor Portugal: Monica Guerreiro
Research in Lisbon: Jeroen Peeters
Coördination: Steven De Belder, Jeroen Peeters, Charlotte Vandevyver, Myriam Van Imschoot
Translator: Clive Thoms
Financial Support: Portuguese Institute for the Arts
Thank you to: André Lepecki for the contribution to this anthology, BLITZ for giving consent to republish the texts on www.sarma.be, Diana Teixeira (typiste)
He has recently won the first Madalena Perdigão Prize [awarded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation]; he will be presenting a series of performances at the Institut Franco-Portugais – giving the Portuguese première of the choreography presented at Klapstuk’91 – and he has announced the creation of his own company, RE.AL, Resposta Alternativa [Alternative Response]. I’m talking about João Fiadeiro. Here’s a portrait of the choreographer.
1. I get around (in a vicious circle)
J. F.: For any strategy you may have for the future you have to have a base and having a base is avoiding things being just ephemeral. That’s a real base. To achieve continuity, it’s impossible that in your next piece you won’t have more or less the same people as were involved in the previous piece. So to keep these people, I have to pay them, to pay them I have to get my work around the place, to do this I have to… get around (laughs). If all I do is get around, I’m not going to have time to create if the people are different. If they’re the same, I put the piece together, it’s done, and even if I spend three months touring with the piece, during the day I’m working on the next one. In essence, it’s what people do, it’s what other groups do and my aim is more or less this, it’s to create a vicious circle which can pay for its own existence: through the performances I have done, and through future performances – you can’t keep something solid going without giving something to the dancers, even if there isn’t any money up front, there has to be the prospect that things are happening. In essence what happens is that you can’t wait for things to happen and then when they’ve happened wonder what the best way would be to keep them going. You have to look ahead. You have to anticipate. RE.AL will help to meet this need for continuity.
2. Big hit
A. L.: O Retrato da Memória Enquanto Peso Morto [Portrait of Memory as a Dead Weight] will be presented for the first time abroad, at the Théatre de la Bastille.
J. F.: Well, O Retrato… is a piece I know more or less what effect it will have. Paris I already know more or less what it will be like, it’s not going to be a big hit, but then… I mean, it will be what I want it to be, I mean, people will have the idea that there is talent and work in it…
A. L.: But why won’t it be a big hit?
J. F.: It won’t because it’s not a big hit sort of piece. It’s a piece that not only everyone I have spoken to about it, but me too, when I see the piece, I realise that it’s like this: it’s a choreography of a person who had something to say, said it, it works, and there are some very interesting things there, which ought to be explored…
A. L.: So how do you justify the prize it won?
J. F.: I think I won the prize because… the prize itself, I think it’s exceptionally relative. It’s a “conjecture” (laughs). If it had been a different panel of judges, other critics, it would have gone to someone else. I actually said that in my acceptance speech: the prize could have gone to me or to someone else. As it was me, I feel a bit like the representative of a movement which is receiving a prize. In any case, I’m glad that the panel included people involved with theatre, who were people more or less outside the closed circle of dance critics, and I’m glad that their decision was more or less unanimous. But I think it has everything to do with a very specific movement, my piece is a piece with more impact, it has a lot of people, it’s in a convent, things like that… I makes more of an impact… I’m not saying that I don’t think I deserve it, I actually think I do deserve it, I’ll say it straight, I do. At first I was surprised, but then when I saw who the judges were, and which other pieces had opened…
3. The future, Art
A. L.: Classic question: so what now?
J. F.: I’m going to start work in the studio in February on restaging O Retrato…, but to start with I have to choreograph my next piece which is going to be for Acarte. I turned down the proposal from José Sasportes for March, because it was too early. I suggested a later date and at the moment we’re negotiating when it’s going to be and it may well be in the Encontros Acarte, which is really good because I’m touring O Retrato… (Paris, La Rochelle, Germany) and in September I have another piece to take around. I hope next year just to tour with existing pieces, to build up the company’s foundations.
A. L.: And Art? (laughs)
J. F.: Good question, and the art? Look, I’m doing this piece which is going to have a really cool group of people working on it. So far we’ve got the same five dancers (Ofélia Cardoso, Ângela Guerreiro, Sílvia Real, Nuno Bizarro and myself), we’ve got João Lucas doing the music again, Marta Wengorovius, as well as Filipe Alarcão, doing the sets. I decided to have two set designers: one more “practical” and the other more “visual/creative”, because as well as the fact I feel very “visual/creative” in the final product of my pieces, it’s also the case that for many things which I want to explore with strings, with pulleys, magnets, I need someone who knows how to make them work… but principally they get on very well, and that’s fundamental. Then there’s Eduarda Abbondanza doing the costumes and all these people know each other, they make a united team and they know me. So what have I hit on for the structure of the piece? Instead of me trying to invent a world, I went out looking for guys who had already done that (laughs) and who had in some way talked about the things I’m talking about – emotions, sensations, etc.. This time I’ve seized on something very real which has to do with me. By chance, pure chance, I’ve been reading a lot and I read this title Is Reality Real?, by Paul Watzlawick, and I thought, “that’s it!”. I don’t mean that I’m going to base myself on the book, but everything he talks about, conditioned reflexes, confusion, communication, disinformation, codes, the fact that sensorial communication has priority over verbal communication… All that fascinated me. I’ve no doubt that the end product will be completely different from the idea of the book, but what I need is a very strong stimulus... Now, I think I’m going to make a piece very similar to O Retrato…, in terms of impact and all the things I like best, with all this I’ve been talking about. But it’s going to be more than O Retrato…, not just because I’ve got more under my belt, not because I’ve already done the Anti-retrato. I think that the duet (presented at Klapstuk’91 and shortly to be premiered at the Institut Franco-Portugais) is the anti-retrato and in the negation I discovered a lot of things, but mainly because I now have a very strong base. But it’s also obvious that it will be a piece which will have a lot of things from the duet, I think, a lot of things that I discovered through the duet, do you see?
A. L.: What did you discover?
J. F.: A sense of calm. I think I discovered a kind of calm… Give things time to let them happen.