MICHELINE TORRES BEYOND THE FLESH
Micheline Torres was born in 1974 in Sertãozinho, a small town in Brazil Northeast state of Paraiba, but was raised in Meier, a Rio de Janeiro suburb. She studied Philosophy and Theater at University but has a degree in Ballet and Contemporary Dance. Micheline lives today in Copacabana but we seldom see her near the waves of the most famous beach of Rio de Janeiro city.
Micheline works as a contemporary dancer in Brazil and abroad. Copacabana sees her for some few months. She has been to Canada, Sweden, Portugal, France, England, Germany.
It is my work. It is what I put into the world. It is (also) the way I make a living in Brazil. And I know that it is barely impossible, but happens...
In 2008 she is going to spend three months working in Paris, France. She is one of the 8 world artists that has been selected by the Centre International des Récollets for a scholarship.Micheline Torres´ work is developed through a research on dancing, performance and plastic arts. Her career is the opposite of the so much notorious idea that it is not possible to make one's living exclusively in dance.
To be a performer artist in Brazil, or work with contemporary dance, plastic arts, urban intervention or art criticism is to be, as Ricardo Basbaum´s definition, an "artist and etc", I mean, artist plus something else... It is to build collaborative works, acting in several artistic fields, means to be curious and especially VERY INSISTENT! To be an "artist and etc" in Brazil is to think about cultural politics. Also means to do things by one´s own anyway. I believe in those kind of action for me and for us, things that go through us and go ahead.
After 12 years dancing in the Lia Rodrigues Dance Company, Micheline Torres goes to her own flights. She has started in 2007 a solo career as an independent artist. Her first work: the performance Carne (Meat).
And the chicken was on the table, because it is necessary to feed ourselves in several ways. I got my hands inside that, through that chicken entirely. And I was leaving the Lia Rodrigues Dance Company after 12 years of intense collaboration -- a long time planned and negotiated decision -- to be able to concentrate myself on my own projects because it is necessary to feed ourselves in several places.
I went through the chicken, its meat, and started slipping among our materialism, sexuality, the exchanges between what is inside and what is outside, the images that the meat provokes, my body and other´s manipulation, symbols and corporal rituals. Spits, cut, tight meat, drool, blood tourniquet, paste and tooth brush, face surgery, breast absence, dental floss and everything else one wants to see there. Carne was selected in 2006 by the Rumos Dança, a project of the Itaú Cultural, but as a video on dance. After the video, I have developed the idea to a performance that I have already shown at the Jardim das Delicias, Museu da Republica – in Rio de Janeiro, Galeria Vermelho - in São Paulo; SPA das Artes - in Recife and the Multiplicidades Festival – in Vitória. Carne was born as a proposal in a course I have attended at the Parque Lage Visual Arts school: absent body/ present body. So in the beginning it was the body. I´ve started from the idea of presence and absence as life and death, and I found out the alive body, however discouraged, and the dead body, however lively. I came to the chicken. That was more a question about putting me facing another body and asking: who encourages whom? Who manipulates whom? Who enters inside whom? I have always disliked chicken, since I saw my mother clearing one in the kitchen and I had the real notion about how it was before coming with that wonderful smell to our dinner table... From that day on I didn´t eat chicken... I saw enough... And it was the chicken that had came to my way while I was walking in the supermarket thinking about the absent and present body, death and life. I bought the chicken and there I was facing it, on my dinner table, face to face. How to come in?
Micheline has trained with the most important today´s dance professionals: Ruth Amarante and Bernd Marszan, Wuppertal Pina Bausch; Juliana Carneiro da Cunha, Théatrè du Soleil; Henriette Horn, Folkwang Hochschule Essen; Rui Horta, Portugal; Nienke Reehorst, Wim Vandekeybus; Helena Katz,PUC-SP ;Massoud Sadpour, Workcenter of Jerry Grotowsky; Ed Kortland, Wuppertal Pina Bausch; Gary Stevens, England; Alejandro Ahmed, Brazil; Cristophe Wavelet, France; Lia Rodrigues, Brazil.
No, I do not believe, as you´ve asked, that a Brazilian artist should go to another country to "happen". I believe where I live, I believe in exchanges, in partnerships. But I know it is easier to have a scholarship to go to Paris, than go to La Paz, in Bolivia, to meet Narda Alvarado, or go to Tocantins or to Lima, in Peru, or to Juazeiro do Norte. But my desire is to have work and money enough to go to Africa and Mexico and Israel and Sertãozinho. And not just going with " my work and knowledge", but in this double way, in the traffic and exchanging mood. About territory, traffic and exchanges read Milton Santos, a Brazilian geographer.
Even before assuming a career as an independent artist, Micheline Torres has already performed on her own in some of important Brazilian Dance and Performance festivals - as the Panorama RioArte de Dança. In 2004, her solo performance Erosão e Conservação do Solo was supported by the Rumos Dança project of the Itaú Cultural in São Paulo, Brazil.
I have taken Milton Santos´ ideas for my solo performance Erosão e Conservação do Solo. Ideas "stolen" from other territories, other languages, is my common practice. Robbery, theft or plagiarism, creative commons, authorship shared, to go through others and let them go through myself , the esthetics of the plagiarism as Tom Zé has stated. But I have family, father, mother, masters, brothers and distant cousins and I appreciate this reference net that spread beyond myself, to places that I don´t even imagine. About that net, Péricles Cavalcanti and Arnaldo Antunes say: "Antes de mim vieram os velhos/Os jovens vieram depois de mim/ E estamos todos aqui/No meio do caminho dessa vida/ Vinda antes de nós/ E estamos todos a sós" (Before me came the old ones/ The youths came after/ And we are all here/ In the middle of the road of this life/ That has came before us/ And we are all alone").
She has written for the art magazine O Ralador and has performed along with Tunga, a Brazilian artist, in some of his recent works: Teresa , at São Paulo Cultural Center and Laminadas Almas at Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden.
This is a question that the contemporary dance group also asks: how to make contemporary dance in Brazil? How not thinking about prizes but of strong structures that go beyond governments and our own time? How to support creation, circulation, research and audience formation?
Here in Rio de Janeiro, some contemporary dance people have been discussing cultural politics and solutions for government´s cultural program. It has been held several meetings, sometimes difficult ones, many letters to write, choices to make. When I sign a letter, I define myself as an "independent artist". I find that a broad definition, but I feel good having this space to move. It is less about an "independent artist" definition but more about independence and liberty that is what I felt when I looked at the chicken on the table and I asked myself: how can I get through it?
Micheline has also done a video called Você também... A lot of movement for an artist dedicated to an art that, as I said before, some people believe that offers rare perspectives on work. We talked with Micheline Torres about those matters.
So, my dear Andrea, to the beginners I shall say things that I say to me in the mornings or in the most difficult afternoons... " I try to push myself forward every day/First I find a starting point and I start from there./There is nothing/There is nothing/Then there is something for a brief moment/ Then there is nothing again (Rules – David Shri Gley).
And what does Micheline Torres eat?
Leo Bassi – A Arte de Provocar
Milton Santos – Por um outra Globalização
Sophie Calle
Arnaldo Antunes
Marina Abramovic
Judith Butler : How bodies come to matter
Sertãozinho : my hometown in Paraíba
Eszter Salamon : Reproduction
Carnal Art - Orlan's refacing : C.Jill O'Bryan
Pina Bausch
Gina Pane
Lygia Clark
Rodrigo Braga
Lia Rodrigues
Denise Stoklos
Clarice Lispector
Os Sertões : Euclides da Cunha
Grupo Rumo
Tom Zé
Genival Lacerda
Os Trapalhões
Ana Mendieta
Narda Alvarado
Mia Habib
Barbara Kruger
Ghada Amer
Jenny Saville
Suely Rolnik/Félix Guattari : Micropolítica
Vera Mantero
Samuel Beckett
WEBSITE
http://michelinetorres.multiply.com
Photos by Ana Paula Albe and Flavia Vivacqua
INTERVIEW BY ANDREA CARVALHO STARK, 2007
Originally published at Scene4 magazine of arts and media, nov. 2007
http://www.scene4.com/archivesqv6/nov-2007/html/andreacarvalhostark1107.html
©2007 Andréa Carvalho Stark
