Esta hora de espanto

For Esta hora de espanto, Tiago Mesquita Carvalho writes: ‘The river of history flows by and everyone dives into it to get to where it leads. The old world is still drenched in the last rays of the setting sun and although the words sing, the ruin grows, the night advances.’

This piece, in the tone of a choreodrama, takes up the body as and in the landscape, something that runs through much of my work, to summon up limiting and radical images of a foreseeable future of catastrophe. It is also the landscape at the limit of its transformation that interests us, particularly in the radical of catastrophes and the apocalyptic. In Ballast (2015), under a strange sky, the bodies occupied a place, generating their routine and their connections. In this choreographic piece, the movements of the bodies, together with the scenic device, created the theatrical place: a changing place, a place that is made of memory. In Esta hora de espanto some of these notions are once again materialised through the body and the text, a fiction written by Tiago Mesquita Carvalho. Based on the images of catastrophes, the questions of the body and its limits, of figuration and disfigurement in dance are revisited. Fear, a vague understanding of things, unpredictability and the radical nature of catastrophes are all present in this tale where the characters reveal and destroy themselves.

Né Barros

The days go by and we surrender to their unstoppable march. We erect habits and laws so that we can live together and soon discover that we are captives of our routines. We want a way out, but there's nowhere to go. We live like sleepwalkers and our art is to build castles in the air. We live for the future that never comes or for the past that no longer returns, and before us is the immensity of the desert.
Who turned us inside out so that everything we do looks like we're yawning?
And then Death comes sneaking up and smiles and greets the living with his haughty sneer. She is ready for the great harvest of souls, eager to hear the cheers and complaints of mortals. It kisses everyone, embraces everyone and dances with everyone. It spares neither child nor old person, rich or poor, beautiful or ugly. He takes the righteous and the sinner, the saint and the villain. It laughs at human certainties and their feet of clay.
Your cities will burn slowly, and it was you who set them on fire. Within them there will be violence and discord, and crime and intrigue will reign. Your country, you realise, will be totally devastated. Your land is sad and withered, the world is perishing, the sky is falling and hearts are breaking. You want peace, but you have forgotten the verb that weaves it.

Why do we need Death so much? For it to wake us up from our lethargy and let us glimpse astonishment. It is only on the verge of devastation and loss that we cling to what is most sublime about life. The moments closest to falling into the abyss are those in which life returns to itself.

Tiago Mesquita Carvalho