Show: "Frida-Me"

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Review: TAYIO JEAN OMURA- 2015

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When I went up the stairs to the mezzanine, in line, arriving in the hall before the door, there was already a layer of smoke in the air. It caught my attention, or sensation, so for me the performance had already begun. The most difficult thing was to get rid of the images, the sounds, the stories that we already carry with these mythical artists, as you put it. In his dance, looking back, it seems to me that the ideal is to go open, even without knowing the artist. There is, perhaps, a certain expectation of seeing certain images, which we already bring. But Frida reminded me again (which Corvos e Girassóis had also done) that it is always a meeting between Márcio (and in this case Ana) and Frida. And what we have is an encounter with that encounter. Not a date with Frida. Frida-me's “me” seems to say that in English – Frida-me. When the theater door opened, there was a sound, a continuous noise, which caught my attention as well. Of his dances, it seems to me that he most explores something in sound. What in the other shows – screen, red, phase, crows... - was more 'traditional', even classical in music, now in Frida-me it seemed more experimental. It seemed to me that the sound danced more too. Entering the theater, which was packed with people, there was a lot more smoke, a somewhat uterine atmosphere. The braids, guts, dolls, skulls, chairs. The red color of blood. Ana there behind the dress. I sat on the left side of the audience, at floor level. From there, through a crack in the curtain, I could see a figure passing from one side to the other. Maybe you Marcio. And for me, that movement was already causing me things. Anxiety maybe. You also usually start your dances with the space to be walked by the look, by the imagination. I think this is very important. It is a living space that is created, and we can almost feel everything that has passed through there. It's molded there. In energy. In sweat. In human warmth. Even though it was a reasonably cold night outside, inside that space, there was something warm like a womb. Something that would be born there. The light goes out, and back, and there you appear in the chair. Ana disappeared. I like this magic. It was really necessary to explore the magic, to disappear or disappear, to decrease, to multiply, as Alejandro Jodorowsky says – to extend the imagination through the four basic operators of mathematics: add, subtract, multiply, divide (a man with 2 heads, a headless woman, a woman with 12 wombs, hands and feet with a life of their own)... Again the sound. Using distorted guitars, working with noise, bass beats, shuffling sounds, was something different from what I saw in the other dances. There is perhaps a relationship there between tensioned ropes that scream. Vocal cords, braids, guitar strings. If the body opened its mouth, in a macabre grimace, and the scream was silence, the sound of the trail was the opposite – a silence full of body, which opened an invisible grimace. And it was also possible to travel in gestures. The first series of gestures, still sitting there in the chair, opened up a different surrealism for me. Especially with something you did with your fingers, a wormy movement quite different from seeing. It was also possible to travel in these two bodies. Who was Ana, who were you? There was a theater there, stories. We could travel on Frida's personal story, which I did at first, but then I preferred to travel on other things. The sound of the tram, the accident, the images of Frida's disorder... a suicidal desire?... I enjoyed seeing the doll. That moment was important. We can feel the search for a dance that goes through different moments and feelings and sensations. Don't get so caught up in just one of them. Mark moments and spaces. Dramatic variations. I was thinking about the light in the squares. In how it gave a game aspect to the heavy rock and violent dance moments. When the squares flashed. Something like a board game. Yes, maybe that's it, maybe those marked squares reminded me of board games. There were more stories there. More scenes. More theater. Perhaps it was the breathwork that made that clearer. The work of facial expressions. Sometimes I get tired of the 'neutral' face we see in contemporary dance. But in Frida-me you explore something else, more interesting. It seems that you are walking through moments of life, through paintings by Frida. But above all, one sees the image of an artist throwing himself into an abyss of moments in his life and of Frida's paintings. This throwing yourself continues, and it seems that you have already adopted it as a principle, process, motto, method, inspiration: holding hands without fear of death. Ana seemed very happy to be there dancing. It was completely delivered. It was a happy revelation, after all, we were colleagues in a Unirio class, and I thought she was very fun and talented at the time. It's always nice to see you dance, especially after a long time without seeing you. Because it's always different, and always the same. Always a different repetition of the same abyss. It's not Van Gogh, not Klimt or Frida, it's always Márcio, and it's never Márcio. That's what I like about your dances. It's falling into the abyss with you, at that moment. Beautiful dance, beautiful team, beautiful partnership, Ana is really beautiful, what a spirit! I'm already waiting for the next one... and it's never the artist I imagine. That's better.