Esta hora de espanto

For Esta hora de espanto, Tiago Mesquita Carvalho writes: ‘The river of history flows by and everyone dives into it to get to where it leads. The old world is still drenched in the last rays of the setting sun and although the words sing, the ruin grows, the night advances.’

This piece, in the tone of a choreodrama, takes up the body as and in the landscape, something that runs through much of my work, to summon up limiting and radical images of a foreseeable future of catastrophe. It is also the landscape at the limit of its transformation that interests us, particularly in the radical of catastrophes and the apocalyptic. In Ballast (2015), under a strange sky, the bodies occupied a place, generating their routine and their connections. In this choreographic piece, the movements of the bodies, together with the scenic device, created the theatrical place: a changing place, a place that is made of memory. In Esta hora de espanto some of these notions are once again materialised through the body and the text, a fiction written by Tiago Mesquita Carvalho. Based on the images of catastrophes, the questions of the body and its limits, of figuration and disfigurement in dance are revisited. Fear, a vague understanding of things, unpredictability and the radical nature of catastrophes are all present in this tale where the characters reveal and destroy themselves.

Né Barros

Here comes Death, sneaky, and with his haughty sneer he smiles and greets the living. She is ready for the great harvest of souls, eager for the woes and complaints of mortals. It kisses everyone, embraces everyone and dances with everyone. It spares neither child nor old person, rich or poor, beautiful or ugly. He takes the righteous and the sinner, the saint and the villain. It laughs at human certainties and their feet of clay.

Your cities will burn slowly and it was you who set them on fire. Within them there will be violence and discord, and crime and intrigue will reign. Your country, you sense, will be totally devastated. Your land is sad and withered, the world is perishing, the sky is falling and hearts are breaking. You want peace, but you have forgotten the verb that weaves it.

Why do we need Death so much? For it to wake us up from our lethargy and let us glimpse astonishment. It is only on the brink of devastation and loss that we grasp the most sublime thing about life. The moments closest to falling into the abyss are those in which life returns to itself.

Tiago Mesquita Carvalho

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)