Since 2009, Portuguese artistic director and choreographer Joana Castro has dealt with death in her personal life in a very close and constant way, and inevitably ideas such as mourning, decay, destruction, failure and end rituals have crossed her creations.

This project starts from black people as raw material. Darkness as a source, which gave rise to everything. Like a mantle that covers us, like bed and regeneration. Black as a transforming power, of a space that not only absorbs, but also opens to light.

Between amazement and numbness, these bodies are matter and memory, ghostly presences that wander among evocations and amazement, laughter and cries, eroticism and violence, in a constant evasion of themselves.

Death is not stalled, but mutable. Each matter transforms itself, finding a new beginning at its end. Dance, like life, is ephemeral. But Darktraces attempts eternity, in a suspension of an inspiration, in the repetition of movements or permanence in states.

And in the end, what remains?

Having premiered in April at the Festival Dias da Dança (DDD), in Porto, within the Body+City axis, the work is presented at the Biennial together with 131 OUT, by Sara Marasso and Stefano Risso (Portugal/Italy).

FULL TECHNICAL DATA SHEET
Realization and artistic direction: Joana Castro
Performers: Ana Rita Xavier, André Mendes, Maurícia Neves e Thamiris Carvalho
Costumes and characterization: Joana Castro (from costume and characterization of Silvana Ivaldi at RITE OF DECAY)
Execution: Joana Castro e Miguel De
Video edition: Miguel De
Sound: Joana Castro
Camera Operation: a-tundra

PARTNERSHIP AND SUPPORT
Support for creation and artistics residencies: Rectory of the University of Porto, “Visões Úteis e Maus Hábitos”
Creative Scholarship: Balleteatro
Acknowledgments: Daniel Pires

SITE/REDE SOCIAL
joanacastrofficial.blogspot.com
instagram.com/joana_cst/