DISTANTE - PAISAGENS, MÁQUINAS, ANIMAIS -NÉ BARROS

There are forms of combat that have evolved into games, such as fencing. Throughout the piece Distant, the third in the series Landscapes, Machines and Animals, the dancers are players, calling on technique as an evolved way of relating to each other body to body. The body-machine should, above all, follow this line, be able to mould instinct and give it a new ethical life. The machine, in this sense, is the possibility, through technique and technology, of expanding the body and place without territorialising it. An anti-war message if you like... Distanced by the ethical dimension in relation to the other, distanced by a time characterised by repetition, a machine time used above all to remember. The motivation to make a series of projects around landscapes, machines and animals arose from the need to think of a piece that wouldn't end with a single show, but that could dialogue with other works. The recurrence of landscape and the body as landscape in my projects, even if not always in an obvious way, determined this cycle of work that began with IO, will continue with Neve and will have its third part with Distante.
This fictional adventure should result in an inter-piece and intra-piece dialogue. Landscapes, Machines and Animals, the concepts involved here, highlight three vanishing points in the definition of the human and, at the same time, open up as categories for thinking about the performing body. In all the pieces, these dimensions are present and intersect, although the starting point for each one is located in each of the dimensions. If in IO the body summons the animal and the mythological, the primitive and the technological, in Neve the landscape emerges in all its variants, that is, landscape as the outside, the exterior, the individual as an intelligent landscape, the emotive and sound landscape, the filmed image as a narrative landscape. In Distante, we start from the idea of a body-machine that allows us to work in this paradox of distant-next and that uses technique as a fundamental tool for humanisation. - Né Barros

NÉ BARROS

Né Barros is a choreographer, dancer and researcher. In her projects she regularly collaborates with visual artists, photographers, film directors, stage directors and musicians. She trained in classical dance and worked in contemporary dance and choreographic composition in the USA. She is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Porto. She is a lecturer at ESAP - Escola Superior de Artes do Porto and a guest lecturer at various institutions. PhD in Dance, Master in Dance Studies. She studied Theatre. Co-founder of Balleteatro and artistic director of the Family Film Project.