Versa-vice — Tânia Carvalho

Two years separate Versa-vice from a piece by Tânia Carvalho that premiered in Marseille one evening in January 2020. The name of this piece was Onironauta. A name borrowed from those travelers capable of controlling their dreams, of shaping, for themselves alone, a world of images and meanings. There were seven dancers on stage. A number that, as is often the case in Tânia Carvalho’s works, sets the tone, translates an intention, betrays a demiurgic claim.

How many will be on stage to perform Versa-vice? To date, Tânia Carvalho does not know, or pretends not to know. Eleven or twelve, she says. But from one to the other, it’s a world away! And those who, like me, are lucky enough to know her would tend to see it as a cover-up.

The devil is in the detail, some will agree, but not only: this new piece could have been called “Oneirophrenia”, named after that clinical condition from another time, categorized by sensory deprivation due to lack of sleep. A most suggestive name which, associated with the number twelve, would not have failed to evoke to the amateurs of the Marseilles Tarot the card of the hanged man (XII), carrying an unequivocal meaning: isolation and illness.

Instead, the title of this new piece, Versa-vice, sounds like a celebration of our emotions. A declaration of life, as we wage war.

Backwards, Tania Carvalho, as always.