one mysterious Thing, said e.e. cummings*

by Vera Mantero, 1996

The solo “one mysterious Thing, said e.e.cummings*” was created in January 1996 for the “Homage to Josephine Baker”, an event organized by the theatre Culturgest in Lisbon. In her vision of the life and the work of the black dancer and singer of the first half of the 20th century, Vera Mantero chose an approach that goes beyond the face of Josephine Baker. In the program she wrote: “It is one thing that I would like to find or create: a vast territory in which richness of spirit prevails. (…) This spirit I’m talking about has no wish to abolish the body, has no shame of its desire and of its sex, what this spirit wishes is to eradicate coarseness, the frightful foolishness, the deep ignorance, the poverty of horizons, the materialism, etc., etc. (unfortunately, this seems to be a long list...).”

"An impossibility, a bad way of living, a sadness, an absence, a sorrow, an inability, atrocious" are some of the words that are repeated, with an insistence growing, throughout the spectacle "where Vera Mantero precariously balances herself on goat feet and budging to the rhythm of difficulty that the words enunciate without arriving to pull out the feet of the condemnation to which they remain. Exasperating corporisation of an uncomfortableness that, as one knows, always begins by being a not knowing what to do with the body" describes Alexandre Melo in Expresso. And he concludes: "Two hypotheses to describe this generic, general, civilizational situation: there is something that lacks. Or, maybe better, there is something that is not."

Text included in the press release of the festival Danças na Cidade 1996

*that's why e.e.cummings* wrote about her "one mysterious Thing, neither primitive nor civilized, or beyond time, in the sense that emotion is beyond arithmetics.

Talvez ela pudesse dançar primeiro e pensar depois 

[Maybe she could dance first and think afterwards] (1991) 

by Vera Mantero, 1991

Perhaps she could dance first and think afterwards was created for the Europalia Festival in Belgium in 1991 (that year dedicated to Portugal and which included a wide Portuguese choreographic representation).

This solo has a prime place on Vera Mantero's choreographic course. It is a work that spans almost two decades and is, singularly, still alive and be presented. Why? It was with this solo that the author found part of her identity in terms of movement, in terms of how to be on stage, in terms of tools and elements that she uses to create and perform: a body that doesn't neglect gestures, the hands, the face, the expressions, that includes them because she knows that these elements are absolutely part of the body-person; which constantly tries to grasp what is going through her, trying to expose exactly this through the responses of a vibratil body; a body that dashes against time-cadence and plays with it/them like a child plays with marbles; a body which sometimes produces an almost-talking, in sounds that seem wanting to take the shape of words, on lips that articulate inaudible words. Why did this happen to this body?

Mantero wrote on the evening program by that time: "My relationship with dance revolves around the following questions: what does dance say? What can I say with dance? What am I saying when I'm dancing?". The ability and inability of dance to SAY, were in the center of the author's creative preoccupations at the time (... aren't they still?). The strategy of inclusion (in the actions, movements, impulses) of other materials, which are not the commonly used ones for dance, were the means and the research that the author undertook to force-push-pressure the dance to SAY (...)

Olympia

by Vera Mantero, 1993

The only description of this piece, given in the original flyer, at the premiere: Vera Mantero, improvisation, 5 minutes. I think no one in the organization of the Marathon For Dance had any idea of what I was going to do. And I also think that it did not last only 5 minutes.

The Marathon For Dance is already a historical event, created in 1993 by several dancers and choreographers that had decided to awake the country. For the dance happening in it. When they invited me to participate, I enthusiastically said yes and started to think about what I could do to “awake” the people. At that time I was reading Asphyxiating Culture, by Jean Dubuffet, and it seemed to me absolutely right to read some parts of this book for that occasion to whomever might be present at the Maria Matos Theatre. “But read it how? And won’t it be a bit pretentious, to go there and say I am the one who knows what is true culture, or the best culture? Maybe I should be naked... I must read Dubuffet naked. Glued to the ground in front of a microphone? No, that’s impossible ... Doing what then? Naked...?” This nudity made me think of Manet’s Olympia, which I had just seen at the Musée D’Orsay in Paris, where I was living at the time. “What if it was Olympia reading Dubuffet? Oh, no! how dreadful, everybody will be blaming me for sacrilege on painting, etc., etc...”. I told André Lepecki that I wanted to read Dubuffet naked but didn’t know how to do it without just reading Dubuffet naked. I didn't even talk to him about the painting. Would you believe what he then said? “Oh, Vera, don’t you remember Manet’s Olympia [that we had seen together]? I think you should do something with her.” [!!!]

And that’s what I did.

Vera Mantero