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I watched the show on a Sunday, during carnaval, in the ninth floor of Sesc Avenida Paulista. When I left the theater, as I walked through the empty avenue in the heart of São Paulo I believe I felt Rio de Janeiro’s ocean breeze.

Amidst a series of divagations, I imagined this feeling could have occurred because the show I had just watched brought something of the humor and easiness of those who leave rehearsals walking, wearing flip-flops, full of fruitful restlessness and reflect, without delay, while feeling the sun on their faces and admiring the landscape.

Logo após esta reflexão me senti culpada por ter construído uma imagem do carioca tão estereotipada, mas resolvi não dar ouvidos ao meu deslize, porque a brisa que senti naquela noite me trouxe a certeza de que Gustavo, Milena, Francini, Ignácio e seus colaboradores haviam feito um trabalho cheio de vida.

Right after this reflections I felt guilty I had built such a stereotyped image of the Carioca (those who are born in Rio), but I decided not to listen to my misstep , because the breeze I felt that evening brought me the assurance that Gustavo, Milena, Francini, Ignácio and their collaborators had done a piece of work full of life

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Every artistic proposal offers clues for critical reflection that both exceed it and comprehend it at the same time.

Regardless of the work’s character, those who get in touch with a piece of art tend to meditate, to a greater or lesser extent, about the poetic alternatives presented and to observe the context(s) in which the encounter takes place.

Even if provocations are intrinsic to the perceptive experience in general[1], there are particular art pieces that tackle the distinct aspects of the artistic fact, bringing its structures and mechanisms to light and proposing their problematization, in order to engender a fruitful reflection about the aesthetic phenomenon.

In the dramaturgy from the second half of the 20th century, there are many works entrenched with this critical perspective. The plays of Samuel Beckett, Bernard-Marie Koltés, Heiner Müller or Peter Handke, among others, take off from a deep review of theatrical conventions – regarding the structure of narrative, the approach of the character, the stage-audience relationship, etc – bringing poetics that, in spite of being made of sheer subversion, reveals itself to be “rigorously literary and radically scenic”.[2]

According to researcher Gerald Siegmund, within the scope of contemporary dance self-reflective restlessness started to get more space in stages after the 1990’s thanks to the work of a generation of choreographers – such as Xavier Le Roy, Meg Stuart and Jérôme Bel, among others – who dove into the questioning of the “fundamental postulates of dance and the social relationships in which it is based.”[3]

Despite the differences assessed in the approaches and resources explored by each one of these artists, according to Siegmund, their work share the desire to “question themselves about the nature of the show and its format and specially about the images upon which the body creates as it is seen displaying itself”.[4]

This way to attach the creative processes in dance to a sort of critical-reflexive “methodology” seems to have become the distinctive trace of the work of choreographer Gustavo Ciríaco, from Rio de Janeiro – an artist who has been delving deeper into the meshes of self-reflectivity, without abandoning the playful quality that distinguished the works of Dupla Ikswalsinats (1995-2005), which he formed with Frederico Paredes.

If the relationship between performers and the audience was already an issue in the award-winning Still – sob o estado das coisas (2007)[5], – even if the proposal, as Helena Katz observed, would prove to be a more fertile ground for the “exploration of real-time”[6] –, in Gustavo Ciríaco’s latest piece, Nada. Vamos ver. (2009), the analysis and poetic exploration of this relationship become essential.

The program of Nada. Vamos ver. informs us that the work proposes to discuss the “tacit agreements that exist in the common sharing between artist and audience in the physical space of a theater during a show” through the “evidence of the codes and attention schemes present in a performance situation” and its “temporary redefinition”. [7]

Amidst the diversity of scenic games the choreographer proposes to make theses relationships more consistent, the variable organization of the scenic apparatus stands out – it constantly modifies itself according to the continuous displacement of the audience and the dancers – and its potential to reveal the distinct ways in which the environment could be perceived according to the occupation of space.

Memories linked to the distinct configurations of the room are evoked by the spectators when they are questioned about other plays they have watched before in the same place and others are brought to light by the performers when they go over and comment the spatial organization of Still – sob o estado das coisas, staged in 2007, in the same theater. This exchange of updates underlines the role of memory in the process of assimilating the codes of theater and produces an interesting reflection about the spatial, temporal and affective elements that are part of the reminiscences of a performing event.

The experience that Gustavo Ciríaco once had as spectator, narrated in one of the scenes in the beginning of the show, proposed a transitory subversion of the role usually assigned to the performer – even though fruition is an essential aspect of the theatrical event, the experience of watching other plays is rarely brought to the stage – and seems to confirm how these mnemonic processes, understood as poetic recreations, can give a larger meaning to the idea of theater as a space for shared experiences.

The issue of theatrical illusion is discussed in scenes that preserve enough ambiguity to underline the differences between the real dimension of the actions that take place on the stage and fictional context to which the scene seeks to refer. In the moment Francini Barros places herself behind Ignácio Aldunate so that her hair serves as wig to the female character “played” by the male dancer, this tension is evinced in a playful way – referring to those children’s game in which complicity and trust in the code established for the game have a value higher than any attempt of verisimilitude.

The narrative structure of theater is problematized in the moment the dancers mingle with the audience, establishing an informal chat. During this action, the colloquial tone seems out of tune with the purpose of the scene – announced in the preamble of the conversation, as the moment of “story telling”, but this oddness ends up promoting a reflection about the predominant discourses of theater, whose standardization, analyzed in broader perspective, shows how sociolinguistic standards impose inflections that must be employed in different contexts.

The same way in which everyday speech is taken to the stage to stimulate an evaluation of the uses of the language of theater, in another scene of the show, one of the most rooted scenic conventions – the thank you ritual – becomes an ironic choreography as it is dislocated from its usual function.

The weight of the audience’s expectations regarding the preconceived modes of participation and the habits that mark behavior in these contexts are always tested and subverted with a lot of humor and respect. The “instructions” written in the costumes to provoke actions, the ways to say “excuse me” to the spectators to provoke spatial displacements and the invitations to the audience to join the games are handled with the same courtesy the group seems to handle the deep issues it sets out to scrutinize.

Lucía Yánez (Uruguay-Brazil) is a researcher, has a master’s degree in theater (UNIRIO) and doctorship candidate in the Post-graduation in Social History of Culture ay PUC-RIO.

Watch the video produced during the premiere of the show that took place in Festival Panorama de Dança 2009.