Of ivory and flesh – statues also suffer

Stone, wax, wood, metal, ivory and other material served men to create bodies, figures, mechanic puppets… physically and emotionally crafted, forms of the virtual world, deified or freely fantasized, they managed to simulate life and trick death.

In Ovid, Metamorphoses, the story of Pygmalion that develops within the myth of Orpheus, is a song of hope in resurrection. In this story inside a story, which narrates transgressions, death and earthly limits are defied through desire.

The subtitle of this project has a relation with Alain Resnais and Chris Marker’s Les statues meurent aussi / Statues also die of 1953. ‘Suffer’ in French – ‘souffrir’ – means both to suffer (to be in pain) and to wait (it can be said of an unclaimed package at the post office). Within the frame of our project, bodies-statues ‘suffer from reminiscences’: the agile and performing body becomes as well a body of symptoms, that is to say, gestures become reminiscent and intense.

Statues are a possible metaphor for stillness; balls, a possible one for movement; petrification, one that may stand for the transformation of humans into statues, corresponding to a rooting into the place where it occurs. Petrification turns to be the strangest metamorphosis to movement and the most contradictory to the idea of a ball.

Of ivory and flesh – statues also suffer is a ball of petrified figures.

Of ivory and flesh – statues also suffer (2014)

Choreography| Marlene Monteiro Freitas
Interpretation | Andreas Merk, Betty Tchomanga, Henri “Cookie” Lesguillier, Lander Patrick, Marlene Monteiro Freitas, Miguel Filipe, Tomás Moital
Sound | Tiago Cerqueira
Light | Space | Yannick Fouassier
Research| Marlene Monteiro Freitas, João Francisco Figueira
Production | P.OR.K – Soraia Gonçalves, Joana Costa Santos (Lisbon, PT)
Distribution| Key Performance (Stockholm, SE)

Co-production| O Espaço do Tempo, Montemor-o-Novo (PT); Alkantara Festival, Lisbon (PT); Maria Matos Teatro Municipal, Lisbon (PT); Bomba Suicida, Lisbon (with the support of DGArtes, PT); CCN Rillieux-la-pape, direction Yuval Pick, Rilleux-la-pape (FR); Musée de la danse, Rennes (FR); Centre Pompidou, Paris (FR); Festival Montpellier Danse 2014, Montpellier (FR); ARCADI, Paris (FR); le CDC – centre de développement chorégraphique de Toulouse/Midi-Pyrénées, Toulouse (FR); Théâtre National de Bordeaux en Aquitaine, Bordeaux (FR); Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels (BE); WP Zimmer, Antwerp (BE); NXTSTP (with the support of the EU Culture Programme)
Supported by | ACCCA – Companhia Clara Andermatt (Lisbon, PT)
Acknowledgements| Staresgrime (Amadora, PT), Dr. Ephraim Nold