C A R C A S S — Marco da Silva Ferreira

C A R C A S S — Marco da Silva Ferreira

In C A R C A S S, Marco da Silva Ferreira uses dance as a tool to research community, construction of collective identity, memory, and cultural crystallization. The choreography, which initially starts with jumping footwork as an agitator and accelerator, progressively draws a vibrant, rebellious, and carnivalesque body. A cast of 10 performers forms a collective that researches their collective identity in a physical, intuitive, and unpretentious flow of the body, dance, and cultural construction. They start from familiar footwork, coming from clubbing, ball’s, cipher battles, and the studio to approach standardized and immutable folk dances related to their memory/heritage. These dances from the past crystallized and were not able to integrate new definitions of bodies, groups, and communities that were considered minor. It was necessary to break with the authoritarian, totalitarian, and paternalistic past. In C A R C A S S, an exercise that integrates the past and the present is proposed. Thinking about: How do you decide to forget and make a memory? What is the role of individual identities in building a community? What is the driving force of an identity? What world is the individual and collective body going through? Or, rather, what bodies are crossing the world?

The steps, complex but made with simple sneakers, will bring not only the sound to the stage, but also the exchanges between kinetic, thermal, and light energy. The physical sounds are accompanied by drums played by João Pais Filipe and electronic music by Luis Pestana. These elements, performed live, constitute an accelerated soundtrack that interconnects references from traditional music (for example, fanfares and marches), postmodern music, and clubbing music (Techno/trance/dub).

ABOUT MARCO DA SILVA FERREIRA

Marco da Silva Ferreira was born in 1986 in Santa Maria da Feira and graduated in physiotherapy by Instituto Piaget, Gaia (2010), a career that has never exercised but focuses his studies on Health Sciences. The body practice began in 1996 through sport, specifically high-performance swimming. In 2002, he abandoned it to give way to body practices in performing arts. His path was self-taught through dance styles that flowed in an urban context with afro-descendant influences. Between 2002 and 2010 the focus and lexicons of dance became increasingly diverse and closer to contemporary improvisation tools and composition. In 2010, he won the TV contest So You Think You Can Dance – Portugal. A professional performer since 2008, has been dancing to André Mesquita, hofesh Shechter, Sylvia Rijmer, Tiago Guedes, Victor Hugo Pontes, Paulo Ribeiro among others. The highlight in Marco’s career is HU(R)MANO (2013) which was in the Aerowaves Priority Companies (2015) and was performed in the national and international circuits until 2018. BROTHER (2016) consolidated an authorial discourse in a line of reflection on dance and its meaning today, creating connections with its origins and drawing a line made from the contemporary body. It premiered at Teatro Municipal do Porto-Rivoli and has toured
extensively internationally and nationally, having also participated in Aerowaves Priority Companies, 2018.