I was challenged to create this work as part of the celebrations of the 500th anniversary of Ferdinand Magellan's circumnavigation of the world that took place throughout 2019 and 2020. As I created this performance, I tried to reflect on the legacy and the possible civilisation consequences of that period in our contemporaneity and in what defines us today, namely in the artistic field and in the way that this heritage affected and defined, for example, the identity of the dance we make.
Questioning this historical heritage, reflecting on concepts such as globalisation and universality, inaugurated in a way by the adventure of discoveries and assimilated in our contemporaneity, what is truly my dance, our dance, the dance of Portugal, Brazil, Chile or Uruguay today?
Could it be that my dance, for example, was born from a dominant culture, which imposed itself on all others? To what extent has it spread and what is the dimension of its impact?
When I put myself in front of the other, different, who has been subject to this historical imposition, what dance can he have left? What defines it? What are its intrinsic characteristics? Is it possible to identify them?
In the Magellan's historic epopee there is an episode that is relevant to its end and that became central to the reflection for this creation, his death during an ambush, before his mission was completed. Faced with this fact, it was his Spanish colleague, Elcano, who continued and ended the journey.
In a kind of analogy, Magellan's death, both literal and metaphorical, emerged in this project as a possibility to think about the moment when something ends or is interrupted, and how, from there, another perspective is drawn, a new paradigm.
How to consider the transition from one system to another, be it conceptual or political, or even aesthetic? How to confront and think about the past and its ghosts, while trying to glimpse and inhabit other worlds, other existences, corporeal or immaterial?
What would happen if the European “creator” “died”? If suddenly this authorship and logic were shaken or stopped making sense? What would it imprint on those who stay? And what challenges would face those who keep on going? How to overcome heritage and trauma and open up new fields of action?
This performance premiered in Montevideo, in December 2019, still unfinished, perhaps irresolvable, crossed by various vicissitudes, just like a journey, or a drift, with its unpredictability and surprises, perhaps too small to encompass such ambition.
Miguel Pereira
Ficha Artística
