Do the parts speak of the whole? | Roberto Pereira

Dialogue between Art and Science: Dani Lima creates a new method with a new choreography
Roberto Pereira / Jornal do Brasil

Brave and generous exhibit of esthetical investigations

To Science, as important as the result of a discovery, is its process of investigation: a good research method can always be used again, for other possible discoveries. The choreographer and dancer from Rio, Dani Lima, in her latest work Do the parts speak of the whole?, which had it’s opening night last Friday at Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, seems to transport this idea to another place, not only that of the discovery, but also to the place of creation. The investigation process to which Dani and her dancers have been dedicated lately, appears in a performance form, which is only one of the so many possible forms for a dance thought in full activity. The generosity through which the process is unveiled to the eyes of the public, besides fearlessly showing its sources, bravely performances how a method can, many times, be re-used, by herself or by other creators.

Wondering about the relation between the whole and its parts, Dani Lima elects some scenic procedures that help us think that, in the parts of any organism is the information of the whole. For the translation of this idea into dance, the dialogue with the sculptures/installations by the visual artist Tatiana Grinberg seems to have been the key to so many other dialogues that appear on stage. The winding relation between space and time suggested there, wanders in the subversion of perspectives, imploded in sounds coming from several parts of the theatre in different potentials, as well. Impossible to speak about sound track and scenery: they are only (and mainly) continuations of the bodies that are dancing there. A dance happens among the audience and not only for it.

A possible map of investigation that appears here in the form of a performance can be sketched, for those who follow the choreographer’s work: Thomas Lehmen (German choreographer) Choreography Residence, in the last Panorama RioArte de Dança, the work of Lia Rodrigues, which Dani is dedicated to study for her Master Degree research, the curiosity about post-modern American dance, among so many other informations. However, taking into consideration the fallibility of the whole map, even more instigating seems to be paying attention to how this investigation is shared by all the dancers, so young and vigorous. Dani’s restless ideas seem to find shelter mainly in the quality and freshness of Mônica Burity’s dance, who parades filigrees of thoughts in her movements.

“Living without assurance”, for Dani Lima, "is to live in a constant movement of learning again and again". Her generosity and bravery in showing this, makes her process, her creation. And without clichés, produces a dialogue between Art and Science.

Roberto Pereira is a dance critic and researcher.

Jornal do Brasil - 08/29/2003