c h ãO (grrRoUNd )

Reborn. Die. At a certain point, the verbal sentences – supposedly ambivalent – are reiterated and characterize “c h ãO,” work that runs after instability to check what it can offer in terms of potential. On the sliding linoleum, six performers and co-creators, one of them at the piano, cross a tangle of actions as if their bodies were seismographs. As the world around them hangs, axes swing without losing their tenderness and vibrancy.

The audience is in front of a fragmentary and incomplete play that borrows the tremulous from the music – also known as the sound of doubt – and the dissonance to think of tension as a vibrant bond and not only as a break.

The directors Marcela Levi and Lucía Russo evoke the tritone, a dissonant interval often used in thriller films, also known as the devil’s interval. Its sound gives the idea of movement and instability, and when it is not accompanied by a resolution chord, the listener is distressed and tense because the tritone brings a “need” to be resolved. Dissonance in music does not resolve. It suspends.

Suspend yourself, hang yourself in an interval, a gap in time between up and down, between one side and the other, launching yourself into instability, trepidation, groove. Tap the ground to jump again and get back to the ground. Tap the feet on the ground to raise dust, suspended particles. Hit the ground, shake the earth, make distant bodies tremble.

When the work was presented at the Belgian festival KFDA (Kunstenfestivaldesarts) in 2021, the art critic Sylvia Botella wrote in the French magazine: “Toute la Culture” that “it is not the unfolding of a dance piece, harmoniously arranged with autonomous images linked each other for a political message to be transmitted about Brazil. Above all, it is a surprising and radiant dance floor. It frees. The community is endless there.”

Who are they
In 2010, choreographers Marcela Levi (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and Lucía Russo (Patagonia, Argentina) founded Improvável Produções, a nomadic place for training, research and creation in Rio de Janeiro. Levi & Russo bet on a polyphonic direction in which different inventive positions intersect in a process that welcomes deviant lines, dissent, and internal differences as a constructive critical force and not as self-excluding polarities. Improvável’s work moves towards an experimental aesthetic that emerges from a singular encounter with the impasses of Brazilian society. Therein lies a rigorous effort, rather than succumbing, to transform embarrassments and tensions into the very substance of artistic production.

Datasheet
Creation and direction Marcela Levi & Lucía Russo
Performance and cocreation Alexei Henriques, Ícaro Gaya, Lucas Fonseca, Martim Gueller, Tamires Costa e Washington Silva
Interlocution Ana Kiffer e Felipe Ribeiro
Assistance Lucas Fonseca e Tamires Costa
Lighting design and technical direction Laura Salerno
Sound design toda a equipe
Costumes Levi & Russo
Sound assistance Diogo Perdigão
Lighting assistance Fellipe Oliveira
Sound technician André Omote e André Teles
Cenotechnician Marcus Garcia
Video record Sergio López Caparrós
Video edition Renato Mangolin
Photography Emily Coenegrachts, Renato Mangolin, Carlos Gueller
Artistic production and execution Improvável Produções
Coproduction Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Kaaitheater, Julidans, PACT Zollverein e Something Great
Distribution Something Great
Support Centro Coreográfico da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro/Secretaria Municipal de Cultura, Consulado da Argentina no Rio de Janeiro, Espaço Cultural Sítio Canto da Sabiá e Instituto Villa-Lobos Unirio
Sponsorship Fomento a Todas as Artes – Lei Aldir Blanc | Secretaria Municipal de Cultura do Rio de Janeiro
Acknowledgments Alberto Lalouf, Adriana Coma, André Lepecki, Angela Camargo Seixas, Ana Kavalis, Andrea Del Giorgio, Bruno Jacomino, Carolina Herman, Cecilia Russo, Diego Dantas e o time do CCO, Dina Salem Levy, Doriana Mendes, Daniel Bargues, Fernando Salis, Ginetta Mortera, Giulia Messia, Gustavo Ciríaco, Irene Lenz, Joaquim Alves Ribeiro, Katharina Wallisch, Laura Erber, Luis Maria Giannetti, Maria de Paiva Ribeiro, Maria Villalonga, Marta Heumann, Patricia Giannetti, Paula Delecave, Paula Giannetti, Rui Silveira, Sérgio Barrenechea, Sérgio Rezende, Sol Giannetti, Steven Harper, Susana Russo, Teresa Bofill, Valéria Meireles, Vera Mantero, Verónica Russo e Victoria Giannetti

“Vento,” installation conceived by Lucía Russo in collaboration with Marcela Levi and technical consultancy by Bruno Jacomino, developed within the project “A Room of Wonder” (2013) by Gustavo Ciríaco

“Marina & Ulay,” installation conceived by Marcela Levi, a transcreation of the action “Imponderabilia” (1977) by Marina Abramovic and Ulay