Wording Dances

A series of talks by artists from the international contemporary dance scene, published in podcast format during the 2023/2024 season, both in english and portuguese, in a co-production between Estúdios Victor Cordon and Parasita Association, curated by Carlos Manuel Oliveira.

It aims at giving account of the richness, diversity and scope of current choreographic thinking, as well as the profusion of discourses to which contemporary dance has given rise, covering a variety of issues that make it an inexhaustible terrain of experimentation, problematization and thinking. Alongside the singularity of each artist’s work, lines of thought will be exposed in relation to politics in dance, social choreography, the relationship between dance and language, creative processes and their respective products, or even in relation to the cognition of corporealities. By posing questions such as “What can choreographic thinking do?”, we hope to summon up unique answers, based on what each artist is most dedicated to. In short, the word is given to those who dance and make others dance, but who also question dance and make others think.

In the first episode of Wording Dances, English dancer and choreographer Siobhan Davies reads to us “Postcards from a life which dances”, a text which she wrote exclusively for this occasion.

Davies is engaged with image gathering, drawing, writing and conversation as extensions of dance and choreography. She has been active for over 50 years, making work for both theatres and galleries and, in 2006, together with architect Sarah Wigglesworth, created the Siobhan Davies Dance Studios, in London. She retired from the studios in 2020, but remains an associate professor at Coventry University (Cdare).

In the third episode of Wording Dances, we welcome deufert&plischke, the Artistwin, to read to us from a text which they wrote exclusively for this occasion, entitled “Grand Opening”.

Dr Kattrin Deufert and Thomas Plischke have formed the artistwin deufert&plischke in 2001, and in the last 22 years they have realised over 50 theatre projects that deal with artistic production situations and the complex social dynamics of artistic processes. They have created the Anarchiv series, the Emergence Rooms, the Entropic Institutes, the DURCHEINANDER series, and the dance history project Just in Time, to name a few of their many outputs. All series of works span thematically wide arcs from the origins of Greek mythology to the pressing questions of our time: How do we communicate in a community of strangers? How do we make decisions together? How do we take responsibility for ourselves and for others? Their works go beyond the boundaries of dance and theatre and deal with individual participation and the social everyday in artistic events.

In the fourth episode of the series, we invited Jonathan Burrows to read from a couple of texts which he wrote in recent years and which were also compiled in a book published by Varamo Press in 2022, with the title “Writing Dance”.

Jonathan Burrows is a choreographer whose main focus is an ongoing body of pieces with the composer Matteo Fargion, with whom he continues to perform around the world. He is also the author of “A Choreographer’s Handbook” (Routledge 2010), and is currently an Associate Professor at the Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University.

The series is published on the following platforms:

Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, Castbox and Soundcloud.

Its translation and subtitles can be accessed on YouTube.

⌂ TECHNICAL INFO