Are we ever too old to dance?

Dance Without Age centres on the questions of age and ageing, both at the level of dance and in society more generally. In conjunction, the different activities in the programme aim to refute pre-established ideas (that until now have stood relatively unchallenged) about the age beyond which one can or should dance. They also challenge the public’s expectations when confronted with a body that exists beyond conventional parameters.

Western dance is marked by a normativity that considers anyone over the age of 40 to be old, consequently subjecting them to discrimination. There is a gulf in attitudes between the West and other cultures, for example Japan, where the advancing age of a performer is in fact viewed with respect and admiration. Indeed, it is in those later years that a performer is thought to reach the peak of their abilities. By shining a light on this particular issue of age we can stimulate a broader view of the body and the individual in society, thus deconstructing the exclusionary criteria that affect so many sections of the population.

The Covid19 health crisis has undermined the everyday lives of all of us, but especially those of older people. Already frequently marginalised, older people are among those most heavily affected by the pandemic in terms of their health, meaning that many have been consigned to lengthy periods of solitude. The world today is profoundly preoccupied with the convulsive present and the uncertain future. However, we must not forget how often this world has been responsible for the exclusion of bodies and other subjectivities that do not conform to the canon of supposed normality, beauty or efficiency. This is the case for older people generally and is similarly evident among those who perform in dance.

The term idadismo was adopted in Portuguese as a direct translation of the word ‘ageism’. Coined by Robert Neil Butler in 1969, ‘ageism’ designates the stereotyping of and discrimination against individuals or groups due to their age. A partnership between Festival Alkantara and EIRA, the “Dance Without Age” programme seeks to encourage reflection on ageism, in particular in the world of dance, and to help devise actions to stand against it. At the same time, it is a call for a future in which all subjectivities have room for expression.

In the project, dance professionals over the age of 40 will enter into dialogue with academics from various countries, to reclaim space and visibility for older bodies. While these bodies are perhaps no longer at the height of their physical powers, with their experience and highly-developed motor skills they are still able to embody ideas and captivate audiences.

The programme comprises three days of practice groups, open to dance professionals over the age of 40. Each day will consist of a different type of work led by artists whose languages and practices differ from each other, such as Nacera Belaza, Ali Chahrour and Francisco Camacho. This diversity will contribute to the artistic activation and renewal of the participants. In terms of theory, there will be a symposium featuring relevant international figures from the world of academia, as well as a discussion after the show VELHⒶS. This will be a dialogue between the choreographer Francisco Camacho and the choreographer and researcher Susanne Martin regarding their working methods and artistic viewpoints, moderated by journalist and cultural activist Carla Fernandes. VELHⒶS brings together a group of professionals over the age of 50 with participants of an even more advanced age from the population of Lisbon, accompanied by live music from Sérgio Pelágio.

Simposium – Becoming Aware of Other Bodies

18.11. 2021  – 17h30
TEATRO SÃO LUIZ – Sala Mário Viegas (Free entry)
120 min (in english, with simultaneous translation into portuguese)

Part of the Ageless Dance programme, this panel brings together academics and artists who research aging bodies and their visibility in dance and in society at large. Participants include Ana Macara, Emma Lewis, Kaite O’Reilly, Nanako Nakajima, Ramsay Burt, and Susanne Foellmer.

Bios

Ana Macara, Master and PhD in the area of Dance, is retired as Associate Professor, Department of Dance, Faculty of Human Motricity, University of Lisbon where she worked from 1983 to 2016, teaching Dance Technique, Composition and Choreographic Production among other disciplines of undergraduate, master and doctoral. Coordinator of the Dance Department from 2002 to 2009 and of the Master in Performing Arts at FMH-UTL from 2008-2014. Currently she is a researcher at the Institute of Musicology – Music and Dance (INET-MD) and at the Center for Studies in Performing Arts of FMH – University of Lisbon. She has edited several books, such as “Corpos (Im)Perfeitos: Reflexões para o entendimento da diversidade do performer contemporâneo” or “Pulses and impulses for dance in the community”. In 2010 she organized the International Seminar “Dancing through Maturity” at FMH. She has published several articles on dance, choreography and art education, including “Dance practice: There’s no age for playing with art, chance and communication” and “Elderly who dance”. In 2005, celebrating her 50th birthday, she created and performed the solo “Half-Siècle”, presented in Portugal, Brazil, Finland and Turkey. Between 2009/11 she participated as a creator/interpreter in the project “No Princípio” led by Soraia Silva and supported by the Instituto das Artes/CEN/UnB, and CESC de Brasília. For the Almada Dance Company she created “Sol Memória, Corpos de Luz”, “Dependências”, “Pulos na rua com os pés na Lua”, “Asas e Carapças, Hastes e Barbatanas” and “Elevado a 4”, among other pieces. Co-Artistic Director of Quinzena de Dança de Almada – Festival Internacional de Dança since 1992 and consultant of the Companhia de Dança de Almada since 1990. In 2004 she received the Lawther Award of the UNCG (USA), for her career as a professional dancer.

Emma Lewis was trained at the Royal Ballet School, and her career began in classical ballet working in Spain and Italy. Rediscovering contemporary dance at the age of 23 she trained at London Contemporary Dance School before being engaged in Cullberg Ballet, Sweden. After the birth of her second daughter Emma moved to France and thought to hang up her dancing shoes but it was not to be. She has continued to work and collaborate with choreographers in France and Sweden whilst becoming certified as a teacher in the classical and contemporary dance techniques and the Pilates method. She has the privilege of working since many years with a vast variety of people ranging from professional dancers to Parkinson sufferers enriching her knowledge and their lives through the magic of music and movement. Emma is a member of the DANCE ON Ensemble.

Kaite O’Reilly is a multi-award winning poet, playwright and dramaturg, who writes for radio, screen and live performance. Prizes include the Peggy Ramsay Award, Manchester Theatre Award, Theatre-Wales Award and the Ted Hughes Award for new works in Poetry for Persians (National Theatre Wales). She was honoured in 2017/18 by the international Eliot Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy for her work between Deaf and hearing cultures. Between 2003-06 she was Arts and Humanities Research Council Creative Fellow exploring ‘Alternative Dramaturgies informed by a Deaf and disability Perspective at Exeter University, further developed when Fellow of International Research Centre ‘Interweaving Performance Cultures’, Freie Universitat, Berlin (2011-18). She has received a Hawthornden Fellowship, four Unlimited commissions and two Creative Wales Major Awards from Arts Council Wales, the latter leading to The Beauty Parade, a performance at Wales Millennium Centre in March 2020 featuring spoken, sung, projected and visual languages, co-directed with long term collaborator Phillip Zarrilli. She is known for her pioneering work in disability culture and the aesthetics of access. The ‘d’ Monologues and Atypical Plays for Atypical Actors is published by Oberon/Bloomsbury. Her first feature film with Mad as Birds Production Company will premiere in 2022. www.kaiteoreilly.com

Dr. Nanako Nakajima（中島那奈子）is a scholar and dance dramaturg in Kyoto, Japan, a traditional Japanese dance master, and a Valeska Gert Visiting Professor 2019/20 at Freie Universität Berlin. Her recent dramaturgy includes Dance Archive Box Berlin (Akademie der Künste Berlin, 2020), Wang Mengfan’s work with retired ballet dancers in China, 2019. Nanako received the 2017 Special Commendation of the Elliott Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy from the Literary Manager and Dramaturgs of the Americas. In 2020, she launched her lab “Dance Dramaturgy of Aging” at the Kyoto Art Theater Shunju-za. Publications: Dance Dramaturgy, The Aging Body in Dance; http://www.dancedramaturgy.org

Ramsay Burt is Professor Emeritus at De Montfort University. His publications include The Male Dancer (1995, revised 2007 & 2022), Alien Bodies (1997), Judson Dance Theater (2006), Writing Dancing Together (2009) with Valerie Briginshaw Ungoverning Dance (2016) British dance: Black routes (2016) with Christy Adair, and Dance, Modernism, and Modernity with Michael Huxley (2019). He was founder editor of Discourses in Dance with Susan Foster. In 1999 he was Visiting Professor at the Department of Performance Studies, New York University. In 2010 he was Professeur Invité at l’Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, and he has been a visiting teacher at PARTS in Brussels.

Susanne Foellmer is Professor in Dance Studies at Coventry University, Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE), UK. Her research areas embrace aesthetic theory and corporeality in contemporary dance, performance, and in the Weimar Era, relationships between dance and ‘other’ media as well as temporality, historicity, and politicality of performance. Recent publications include: S. Foellmer: Performing Arts in Transition. Moving Between Media (ed., with M. K. Schmidt and C. Schmitz), Routledge 2019; S. Foellmer: “Bodies’ Borderlands: Right in the Middle. Dis/abilities on Stage.” In: G. Brandstetter and N. Nakajima (eds.), The Aging Body in Dance. A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Routledge, 2017, pp. 90-103; and forthcoming: S. Foellmer: On Remnants and Vestiges. Negotiating Persistence and Ephemerality in the Performing Arts. Routledge 2022. She also has been working as a dramaturge and artistic consultant for Helena Botto, Isabelle Schad, Meg Stuart, and Jeremy Wade among others.

New skills -Workshops for professional dancers

The Ageless Dance programme includes three days of workshops for dancers ages 40 and up. This is a space for proximity, exchanging experiences and artistic trajectories, and creating relationships for the future.

Each day is proposed by a different artist that is part of the festival programme — Francisco Camacho, Nacera Belaza, and Ali Chahrour. Their different practices are offered to the workshop participants as an opportunity for them to activate and renew their own artistic practices.

19th – 10h – 17h | mentor: Francisco Camacho
20th – 10h – 16h  | mentor: Nacera Belaza
21th – 10h – 17h  | mentor: Ali Charour

Bios
Ali Chahrour (Beirut, 1989) is a dancer and choreographer. He studied theatre and dance in Lebanon and at various schools in Europe. His work explores the deep relationships between the body and movement, tradition and modernity, inspired by the political, social, and religious context of Beirut, where he lives and works.

Francisco Camacho is a choreographer and dancer. He is a founding member and current artistic diretor of the production house EIRA. He studied dance and theatre at Companhia Nacional de Bailado, Ballet Gulbenkian, Merce Cunningham Studio, Movement Research, Susan Klein School, and at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. He is part of the Portuguese New Dance movement that began in the late 1980s, and several of his solo works are important references in Portuguese Dance. His work has been presented in Europe, America, Africa, and Asia. He is the recipient of several honours and awards, including the Bordalo Prize (awarded by the Portuguese press association) and the ACARTE/Maria Madalena de Azeredo Perdigão Prize (awarded by the Gulbenkian Foundation). He has performed in work by Creach/Koester, Alain Platel, Carlota Lagido, Miguel Moreira, and Filipa Francisco, and has collaborated on several occasions with Meg Stuart. He has co-authored dance performances with Mónica Lapa, Vera Mantero, Carlota Lagido, Vera Mota, and Sílvia Real, and co-created other works with Fernanda Lapa and Miguel Abreu. He created choreographic work for a piece by visual artist Pedro Cabrita Reis at Bonn Museum and for a Francis Bacon exhibition at the Serralves Museum, as well as for non-conventional spaces. He teaches regularly in Portugal and abroad.

Nacera Belaza, was born in Algeria, but has been living in France since the age of five. After her studies in modern literature at the Université de Reims, she created her own dance company in 1989. In 2008, she was honoured with the Prix de la révélation chorégraphique de l’année du Syndicat de la critique for her work Le Cri. She was appointed Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in January 2015, and in 2017 she received the choreographer award from the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques. Compagnie Nacera Belaza is regularly invited to major venues and festivals. Belaza founded an artistic cooperative in Algeria and has been in charge of the program at the contemporary dance festival “Le Temps dansé.” The company has the status of CERNI (Compagnie et Ensemble à Rayonnement National et International) since 2017.

Performance VelhⒶs, by Francisco Camacho

27.11 — 28.11 at 4pm
TEATRO SÃO LUIZ – SALA LUIS MIGUEL CINTRA
12€/15€ (SEE DISCOUNTS)
AUDIODESCRIPTION (IN PORTUGUESE) AND PORTUGUESE SIGN LANGUAGE – 28.11 16H
AGES 12+
110 MIN
IN PORTUGUESE, WITH ENGLISH AND PORTUGUESE SUBTITLES

Can we be too old to dance? A group of six dancers in their 50s challenge the idea that dance is for the young.
Ana Caetano, Bernardo Gama, Carlota Lagido, Filippo Bandiera, Francisco Camacho, and Sílvia Real move together on stage, to the live music of Sérgio Pelágio. They dance and reflect on their careers as dancers, sharing moments from their past and movements they used to perform. They dance in order to understand how they relate to their physicality in the present, and because why they still desire movement. They dance to participate in the future.