PHAIDRA – Collezioni digitali

This interview tracks the notion of memory along a life trajectory that could make a person believe, too hastily, its irrelevance within it. Dancer, choreographer, researcher, curator, teacher, JOÃO FIADEIRO has crossed a wide spectrum of practices which, from jazz to neoclassical ballet and post-modern dance, molded his need to improvise and explore the territories of the present. The ethic of being in the present leads him to reverse the belief that improvisation does not work with memory. On the contrary, diving into the folds of time where past, future and present collide, reveals to him the existence of another kind of memory, palpable and active, which could be sought in the present. Based on his research on time, Fiadeiro has systematised his intuition into what he calls Real Time Composition, a practice that simultaneously performs a gesture of suspending, a poetic of disappearance and an ethic of standing on the edge.

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:

[00:05:21] What does it mean today for you to speak about memory?
[00:16:35] What kind of personal memories does the word dance bring to your mind?
[00:28:06] What kind of knowledge do you hold in your body? Would you like to let go of something?
[00:36:44] Would you say that the virtuoso dancer in you has totally disappeared? When you improvise, do any of your past practices emerge?
[00:44:31] When did you start defining yourself as a choreographer?
[00:47:53] Does your work integrate the history and memory of dance?
[00:52:48] What kind of memory does the act of improvising require?
[01:05:19] How do you imagine the possible continuation of the memory of your work? What is your relationship with the archive?
[01:11:27] Would you relate the PhD you are writing with a gesture of memory?