Common Dreams, 2025

Common Dreams happens between seeing and not seeing, in the encounter of Ana Rita Teodoro with Joana Gomes. Two dancers dedicated to tactile communication unfold in singular dances, full of detail. Based on the idea that dance has something similar to a dream, they produce movements and sensations difficult to capture in image and translate into words. Common Dreams proposes to remove the visual — as proof of the real — from the hierarchy of senses and create a poetic musical plot, accessible to the reverie of dreams and dances.

Do you remember your dreams? Have you ever known within a dream that you were dreaming? Can a dream solve problems? Can we communicate with animals or ancestors in a dream? Can a dream see the future? Can we dream the same dream?

NOTES ON THE PROCESS

This work was constructed in five stages:

• Collecting dreams.

The first stage consists of listening to and recording the descriptions of dreams from various people. These recordings are sound material for the composition of sound, and also complement the dance compositions of Ana Rita Teodoro and Joana Gomes. The reflections of Tobie Nathan, a French psychologist, professor and writer who has done extensive work in ethnopsychology, were particularly inspiring in guiding the collection of dreams. His book La Nouvelle Interprétation des Rêves (2013) [The New Interpretation of Dreams] is a clear proposal against dream symbolism, which attributes fixed meanings that could apply to anyone. Dreams are unique, but because we live in a community and share common concerns and desires, dreams also bring us closer together. Based on his book, the following categories served as a guide:

. Losing footing, falling asleep, falling.
. Sequence of images – crossings.
. Not finding something, losing something.
. The nightmare, the scream that wakes you up.
. Sex and pleasure.
. Role reversal, the small becoming big, the horse leading its rider.
. Dreams of lack, dreams of excess, dreams of fear and dreams of hope.
. Dreams inventing new proposals, solutions to problems.
. Death or the dead.
. Dreams as a sketch of the next day.

• Composing dances.

Based on these audio recordings and the dream categories described above, Ana Rita Teodoro and Joana Gomes worked on dances. Solo dances, composed with the uniqueness and imagination of each one; dances that begin and end as if they were following a piece of music. The composition process involves rewriting the dance previously created until it intuitively fits what they consider to be fair and interesting for the choreography as a whole. This ‘rewriting’ is both choreographic, dancing again with the idea of composing, and textual, that is, describing with words the events and feelings experienced, in a balance between what ‘I feel’ and what ‘I do.’ This stage gave rise to a set of dances that are described on paper, like a musical score-poem. A mixture of interior monologue with a concrete description of movement and gestures.

• Composing songs.

With these musical scores-poems, they worked together with the vocal trio Guarda-Rios to compose songs that give text and imagery to the dance and choreography. The songs were not composed with the entire text of the musical score-poem, but with a basis that conveys the ‘heart’ of the dance and the intentions relevant to the category of dreams.

• A global choreography.

This is a stage of choreographic composition, where the choreographies were designed for a group of ten dancers (amateurs or professionals), who integrate themselves into the dances of the two ballerinas. This work was done in parallel, but in conjunction with the sound design, in order to unite sound and movement in the overall sense of the piece. This stage is initially done on paper and then with the group of ten dancers.

Image description: Freehand drawing to illustrate the serpentine movement of the 10 dancers.

• Hands on.

Bring all the elements together in the same space – dance, soundscape, vocal trio and choreography for 10 dancers. Adjust and enjoy.

© Aline Belfort

© Aline Belfort

© Aline Belfort

© Aline Belfort

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