O que Fazer Daqui para Trás

O QUE FAZER DAQUI PARA TRÁS explores time - understood as duration, as suspension, as interval – and, "at the same time", focuses attention on what is left behind, on what is forgotten, on what remains. What "remains" creates a void, and the "void" confirms the absence of a presence. Or rather, it is the presence of an absence. It is in this emptiness that we find the traces and tracks to begin the impossible task of reconstructing the world, again and again.

João Fiadeiro

This performance is an extended version of the show O que fazer daqui para trás (2015), a piece based on a very simple device: The performers run around the theatre until they are completely exhausted and then return to an empty stage – there is only a microphone on a tripod in the centre – to share with the audience an experience they have had out there (something they have seen, heard or imagined). 

In this piece, sharing is done verbally; that is, each performer talks about their experiences (navigating between real, fictional and poetic content) with bated breath that chokes them and does not allow them to articulate words and thoughts in a coherent way. For such a device to work, the body must not simply be tired, but really exhausted. As Gilles Deleuze explains in his famous essay on Beckett: "The tired has only exhausted realization, while the exhausted exhausts all of the possible" (1993). The O que fazer daqui para trás device needs the performers exhausted because they must exhaust "what is not realised through the possible".

In this extended version of O que fazer daqui para trás, the spectator becomes the visitor, while the experience, which in the original version was shared verbally, is here shared in the form of action, of situation. 

The performers will run around the Santa Mònica, letting themselves be impacted by what they witness and by the abandoned objects they find along the way. Then, with the object, the memory or the sensation that has struck them "in their hands", they will return to the centre to share with the public a kind of "performative haiku". During this return journey, they will have time to decide "how", "when" and "where" to share their experience. When they take to the streets again, they will leave behind a series of remains, traces and tracks in the form of remnants of memory (or ruins of oblivion). 

This work will be transmitted by performers Márcia Lança and Daniel Pizamiglio, two artists who have been collaborating with João Fiadeiro for a long time. The transmission will take place in the form of an intensive workshop and will use real-time composition as a working tool: a system that João Fiadeiro began to develop in the 1990s for the creation of his choreographic pieces and improvised performances. 

Real-time composition allows us to train the ability to observe ourselves from the outside as the event unfolds and presents itself to us. It is a (theoretical) practice and a (practical) theory that proposes itself as a refuge to welcome and accommodate the forces at play in what we have agreed to call the "present". Within this "present" moves an expanded time that "no longer is" and, at the same time, "is not yet": a non-linear time, lived like a Möbius strip, without inside or outside, without a before or after.

By João Fiadeiro, Márcia Lança and Daniel Pizamiglio

João Fiadeiro 
João Fiadeiro belongs to the generation of choreographers that emerged in the late 1980s within the New Portuguese Dance, influenced by American postmodernism and the Nouvelle Danse. He trained in Lisbon, New York, and Berlin, and danced with the Companhia de Dança de Lisboa and the Ballet Gulbenkian. In 1990, he founded Companhia RE.AL, dedicated to his own creations and supporting emerging artists, and has directed Atelier Real since 2004. He has collaborated with Artistas Unidos and co-directed the AND_Lab centre in Lisbon (2011–2014). He has taught international workshops based on Real-Time Composition, a method he has developed since 2003 combining art, science, and collaboration. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Contemporary Art at the College of Arts, University of Coimbra.

Márcia Lança 
Márcia Lança, born in Beja and based in Lisbon, founded VAGAR in 2008, of which she is the artistic director. A choreographer and performer, she works in territories where the fictional and the real blur, focusing on the poetic materiality of concrete actions and emergent collective compositions. She has practised Lotus Flower Kung Fu since 2008. She collaborates closely with João Fiadeiro in developing Real-Time Composition, with works such as Quasi res és un pla, Dins del Cap, CAVALA, and Morning Sun, and conducts creative workshops and collaborative processes for children and artists.

Daniel Pizamiglio 
Daniel Pizamiglio is a Brazilian choreographer, performer, and researcher based in Lisbon. His transdisciplinary practice explores “being-with” and repair as political gestures, spanning dance, performance, and pedagogy. He has worked closely with João Fiadeiro since 2012 on Real-Time Composition and has contributed to projects such as O que Fazer Daqui para Trás (2015), Ça Va Exploser (2020), Cavala (2023), and COSMOGONIAS_eles não nos poderão matar o espírito (2024). He also develops the project Primeira e Última Vez with poet Miguel Oliva Teles and is the author of the Trilogia do Comum, including works like M (2023) and Primeiro Nada, Depois Nada ou Zzz (2024).