The body expressing itself establishes relations with the space it occupies. It finds in internal or external elements possible reason for its movements. It also operates from different kinds of limits and can either circumscribe itself to them or challenge them. Inseparable from what happens in the mind and spirit, the body is a device that creates grammars, which, in turn, are the result of the amalgam between it and these other dimensions.
A context that has been permeating our bodies for over a year and a half, the current pandemic brings contingencies that constantly bring about new modes and new dynamics in the fields of aesthetic creation and its enjoyment, as well as from cultural and educational action itself. Yet, even with uncertainty as a tonic, such a perspective was not able to curb something that characterizes us as beings endowed with language: expression.
The case of dance is part of this movement, which is confirmed by the plurality of artists who have opened their homes so that the audience can follow – through digital means, it must be said – the most up-to-date creations in this manifestation, keeping its production chain active. Now, the audience has the opportunity to see them in their natural habitats, even if still at a distance.
Dedicated to this scenario and attentive to the different territories in the country and abroad, Sesc Dance Biennial reaches its 12th edition and continues along the path in which work and audience are still mediated by cameras and screens, following the necessary sanitary protocols nowadays. To be held between October 2nd and 10th, 2021, its program includes national performances broadcasted live, online and from Sesc Campinas – its current headquarters – and other Sesc units in the city of São Paulo, besides the availability of recordings of performances from different countries, video dance shows, film collections, artistic residency and training actions, emphasizing the culture’s socio-educational vocation.
By leaving their homes, which served for a long time as temporary stages, and dancing in theaters, squares, and other spaces, and by investing in languages with a high voltage of experimentation, such as video dance, these artists allow us to see finished choreographies or choreographies that are still in the process of creation, and that bore fruit in an undeniably difficult context. This diversity of creations and ways of enjoyment underline the idea that art is a human engine and, even in extreme situations, is capable of reinventing the way it occupies places, confronts limits, and asserts itself as a contemporary spelling of a world permeated by uncertainties and, at the same time, by potencies.
Danilo Santos de Miranda
Regional director of Sesc São Paulo
