Insónia

Insónia (Insomnia) is a show directed by Olga Roriz, designed for a new cast and created in partnership with the creative team of previous pieces. The addition of new elements to the body of dancers renews some of the group’s earlier points of view and aesthetic options. There are dancers from four different nationalities – Portuguese, Italian, English and Polish – resulting from the choices made after an international audition.

The show represents an assertion of the place of the body, its energy and fragility. The restless body of exposed flesh. The wildness of being a woman or being a man in the same erotic world. The identity, origin and memories of each of the performers have been put to the test, confronting the past, present and future and the vital link to one’s origins.

The inexorable passage of time. A study about the feminine and the masculine, the male and the female, without any defined sex, without any gender.

As eroticism is a vague and impalpable concept, belonging to the realm of the imagination, it had to be made concrete, to be intellectualised. In the first phase of the show’s creation, many thoughts were recorded in writing. Here is one of those texts: «Eroticism is a trap for all definitions and interpretations. Eroticism is the game of solitaire; it is a solitary cell that irrigates you with freedom while simultaneously imprisoning you in its darkness and dampness. It is a form of liberation. It is a human and simultaneously animal instinct, but one that springs from a thought. It is a choice of thinking, a temptation. It is an indirect game of attraction, which is not in any way obvious. A combination between the sensual and the sexual. It is ephemeral, like a feeling. Everything that stimulates fantasy. It may be a certain look or gaze. A direct touch. A profound argument. A powerful tone of voice. An embarrassed smile. A moment in which you lose track of time. It may start from the imagination and can be consciously fed by the work of the mind as it continues to play a game. Playing chess with someone can be extremely erotic.»

Insónia emerges from the dreamlike aspects of love, gender and genetics.

Stories that are shared with simplicity and decorum or quite shockingly. Subjects that are turned into a manifesto.

And there is also the image of an inverted spring, as if the seasons of the year could be suspended in space and time.