ATSUMORI 

face-armour — phantasmagoria — technological topography — iridescent futures — spectrum in repetition — apotropaic

Atsumori is dance piece for a quintet and a luminous stage.
It is intimately inspired by the homonymous Japanese Noh theatre piece, where a ghost of a child-warrior, who had been killed in combat, wanders the battlefield, hoping to reconcile and affirm his new condition: that of being a spectrum.

Centered on the idea of the phantasmagoric and hypnagogic (dream states), ATSUMORI starts from the perception of “ghost” as a notion of spectrum in repetition, in a devir of eternal return to “a point in time and space”.

On stage we see bodies wearing mask-armours, which are organized in the determination and occupation of territories, generating identities and codes of common presence

Locking and unlocking joints and transferring levels of visibility from one body to another, these are living surfaces, autopoietic oracles, who dance muscular memories of manifestations of movement and rhythm from a fictional imaginary.

In the spectralization of social constructions of the past and of the future, we unfold the body in movement, from the inside to the outside, forward and backwards, as if Time itself were unfoldable and dismemberable.

The scenic space has as its central object a luminous floor and ceiling, which define a suspended and interstitial space. These topographic plans frame the occupation rules of a system of apotropaic codes, where the bodies that cross it are simultaneously revealed by it.

The highly codified system of Noh and the archetypal dimension of its dramaturgical structure are operated here with a formal outline that turns the abstract and inhuman narrative into a maximum aestheticization of the real. This conquest of time by designing the body for maximum otherness is a fundamental point of this creation.

Catarina Miranda has been developing and presenting creative projects mainly for the stage, which are characterized by the construction of topographies and bodies, simultaneously archetypal and trans-human. In 2018, the artist took part in the Traditional Theater Training course at the Kyoto Art Center in Japan, on the gestural and musical tradition of the Noh Theater.

CIRCULATION 2024
— 27th April — Première — Abril Dança Festival — TAGV, Coimbra | Pt
— 30th April - 1st May — April — DDD Festival / TMP, Porto | Pt
— 16th - 17th May — Centre Pompidou, Paris | France
— 1st June — One Dance Week Festival, Plovdiv | Bulgaria
— 8th June — Teatro Aveirense, Aveiro | Pt

ARTISTIC TEAM
Artistic Direction, Choreography, Costumes— Catarina Miranda
Choreographic co-creation & Performance — Cacá Otto Reuss, Joãozinho Costa, Lewis Seivright, Maria Antunes, Melanie Ferreira
Light Design — Letícia Skrycky & Joana Mário
Music — Lechuga Zafiro
Scenography Conception — Catarina Miranda, Joana Mário, João Brojo, Letícia Skcrycky
Dramaturgical Research Support — Carlos Mesquita, Ece Canli, Fernando Oliveira, Jonathan Saldanha
Executive Production — João Brojo

PARTNERS
Production — Materiais Diversos & Diagonal Animal /PT
Co-production — Centre Pompidou/ Spectacles Vivant (Paris/FR), Charleroi Danse - Centre chorégraphique de Wallonie-Bruxelles (Bruxelas/BE), One Dance Week Festival (Plovdiv/BG), Teatro Aveirense (Aveiro/PT), Teatro Municipal do Porto (Porto/PT) e São Luiz Teatro Municipal (Lisboa/PT).
Residency Support — AGORA (Montpellier/ FR), CRL - Central Elétrica (Porto/PT), Centre Chorégraphique National de Caen en Normandie (Caen/FR), Centro Cultural da Malaposta/Minutos Redondos/Câmara Municipal de Odivelas (Odivelas/PT), O Espaço do Tempo (Montemor-o-Novo/ PT), Teatro Viriato (Viseu/PT) e Teatro Municipal do Porto (Porto/ PT)
Support — Camões Institute of Paris