Critics

I have collaborated with the Portuguese newspaper Público as a critic from 2004 to 2016.  All the dance pieces that I reviewed are listed in the child page “Critics – Portuguese”, and many have  links to the Portuguese published texts.  I am presently working on  a selection of articles with full text attached in English, available at “Reviews – English“.

For me the critic provides a specialized look that can describe, decode and contextualize the performance. The observations in a review should help making links and associations, which are – often not straightforward and sometimes mostly unknown – latent in the artwork. Particularly with the abstractions of dance, we can provide threads for the audience to enter deeply in the aesthetic experience  and discover comments about cultural, political and social issues that are underlying the emotional reactions to sensorial stimuli produced by the piece. This process requires creating and assuming a well-supported and external argument, that on one hand constructs public opinion about the work and may as well be an important feedback and a reference to the artist.

Making movement visible through words is very difficult and rarely there is a story or fixed text in the background to help making sense of dance pieces. However, I have found many times this to be a quite rewarding experience and, throughout these years, I have had the pleasure of writing about the work of  Alain Platel, Aldara Bizarro, Clara Andermatt; Debora Hay; Emmanuelle Huynh; Faustin Linyekula; Joseph Nadj; Lia Rodrigues; Madalena Victorino; Marie Chouinard; Mathilde Monnier; Paulo Ribeiro; Pina Bausch; Rui Horta; Sasha Waltz; Trisha Brown; Vera Mantero and Xavier Le Roy, among many others.