Corpo Clandestino is the arena where seven performers are given a voice, a place of speech. The bodies of Ana Afonso, Andreia, Gaya, Joãozinho, Mafalda, Paulo and Valter are vehicles of identity: they produce images that cannot be forgotten, they tell us things that maybe we didn’t expect to hear. The shape of these bodies is rare, not subject to categorization, often pushed to an invisibility that comforts those who (don't) see and destabilizes those who are(n't) seen. That is no space for that comfortable place here.
Corpo Clandestino is an exercise in displacement and recomposing: what is not usually on stage is put there; attention is sharpened; physical pieces are assembled. On stage there are performers whose non-normative bodies throw the spectator, without a safety net, into a landscape rarely glimpsed – a cast of performers configured in opposition to classicisms and ideals. On stage there is, after all, a single body, formed by seven truly unique pieces.
Forming part of the Rota Clandestina artist residency project, in Setúbal, this work by choreographer Victor Hugo Pontes rethinks the normative approach to the body, which subsists to this day, proposing a path where there is space for communication and sharing, alternative to reductionist, standardized and useless perspectives. From the moment the spectator's point of view coincides with the performers' point of view, it becomes indisputable that we can all occupy and share the same world, however different each one's body may be.
Credits
Artistic direction Victor Hugo Pontes Set design F. Ribeiro Music Joana Gama e Luís Fernandes Technical director and Light designer Wilma Moutinho Costumes Cristina Cunha e Victor Hugo Pontes Cast Ana Afonso Lourenço, Andreia Miguel, Gaya de Medeiros, Joãozinho da Costa, Mafalda Ferreira, Paulo Azevedo e Valter Fernandes Director assistant Ángela Diaz Quintela Sound Rafael Maia Artistic consultancy Madalena Alfaia Production director Joana Ventura Executive Producer Mariana Lourenço Production assistant Inês Guedes Pereira Residence support CRL - Central Elétrica, O Espaço do Tempo, Rota Clandestina - Município de Setúbal, Teatro Municipal do Porto - Campo Alegre Coproducers Nome Próprio, A Oficina - CCVF, Centro de Arte de Ovar, Rota Clandestina - Município de Setúbal, Teatro José Lúcio da Silva, Teatro Municipal do Porto, Théâtre de Liège e Theatro Circo Acknowledgements Teatro Nacional São João