Solo Performance
Premiére 29th May 2009, Festival "Tanz! Heilbronn"
   
Dance & Choreography: Ricardo de Paula
Video: Lars Mylius

 

ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE

A register can be a cash-box in which you keep adding sums. It could as well be a collection of historical and personal records, like the biography of a country or a person, which have a direct influence on each other. These registries also build and define a man in relation to his country and a country in relation its people.

Ricardo is a black man. As an Afro Brazilian he is aware of the stereotypes his image conjures. From the cool Hip-Hop guy in videos or action films to the gangster cliché and criminal drug lord, his is a world of complex duality. This position makes him question who he really is, how he is portrayed and what others really see. He struggles to be heard.

The piece deals with the role of “people” Blacks in society, with their development from slaves to their current ambiguous status. It juxtaposes the funny and cool black man like the government in Brasilia presents him with the common one, that lives underprivileged in favelas, whose births and deaths are unregistered with the state.

Ricardo cycles through the stereotypically expected styles of dance but halts in key positions where the video projection takes over – visually and acoustically presenting the rather hard counterparts of Ricardo, of a man. The piece displays how the ordinary Black is silenced and kept from using the voice with which he could really make himself understood. This will be symbolized by a microphone that’s being thrown over to him but that he cannot reach (crawling on the floor) because it is being deprived again and again constantly kept from his reach.

Register is rich in dance technique and social criticism. It strives to be the voice refused to so many, those who are being judged and dismissed before they could say one word.

SHOW PLACES

2009 FESTIVAL "TANZ! HEILBRONN"