Photo: Dansbyrån
By Alina Duchrow
From Tunis
There are things I want to speak about, which simply can not be represented. They’re the kind of things that only come into existence if they are presented. These things, I don’t even know if they exist, things I never heard of and do not even suspect their presence. And that’s why I want to talk about them: because I want to know them and give them to know. Without filters or intermediaries. In real time.
João Fiadeiro, interview with Annie Suquet
In an interview with Annie Suquet, from the Centre National de la Danse in Paris, the choreographer João Fiadeiro explains the method “Composition in real time”, which he’s been developing and systematizing since 1995. The method gives to a practitioner the tools to relinquish his or her status as a “creator”, and to then assume the role of “mediator” or “facilitator” of events which break habits and patterns and makes things happen for themselves.
The space of the studio is divided in two sections with scotch tape. One of the sides is the “outside” and the other one, the “inside”. The participants start on the “outside”, looking at the “inside”. The “inside” works as a potential space that along the time will absorb the “outside” (and vice versa), and ultimately it’ll abolish any distinction between them. When this happens ― when people outside “feel” as if the were inside, people inside “feel” as if they were outside ― the method has reached its “optimal” state.
Initially, the space remains “open”, until someone decides to act upon it, starting the “hostilities” and the process of real time composition. The decision to act has to be absolutely spontaneous. Only this way one can assume responsibility for his or her actions. To be responsible for what one does is a sine qua non condition for the success of the method.
