What to do with this diagram?

8 February at 6:30pm, Espaço da Penha, Lisbon/Portugal

In 2018, within the scope of the project For a Timeline to Have: genealogies of dance as an artistic practice in Portugal, Ana Bigotte Vieira, João dos Santos Martins and Carlos Manuel Oliveira sought to sketch a possible flowchart from the location of relationships between “protagonists” (mainly choreographers) in the context of their research. This diagram was declined in a reduced and collaborative version at Espaço da Penha in December 2019, within the scope of the 20th anniversary of O Rumo do Fumo,  allowing rewritings by scribbling new information in pencil or even erasing existing information. This new mural was expected to remain there for three months, but after three years it is still there. Contested by some and prized by others, full of virtues as well as problems, the diagram allows, on the one hand, to trace, over the long duration of the 20th XX, genealogies in relation to the current moment, but reduces and obscures other relationships and possibilities.

“What to do with this diagram?” It is a question that is now being asked by the dance community, seeking to think collectively about the preservation of memory and the writings of history, on the one hand, and their critical discussion, on the other. The concrete drawing of new and multiple diagrams is of particular interest, a task that is innate to the gesture that led to its drawing, since whoever makes a diagram makes several, as many as the perspectives he decides to adopt. These are the perspectives that we now want to bring to the discussion.