Bocarra

Luísa Saraiva
(2024)

Bocarra means a very big and open mouth or maw. In Bocarra we depart from female singing repertoire from northern Portugal and Galicia about violence, feelings of bitterness and foreignness. Understanding many of these songs as traditions of non-conformity and as veiled and unresolved resistance against heteronormative roles, we work with movement vocabulary that deals with the continuum between care and violence within physical closeness and the particular vocalic qualities of these musical forms. Bodies are placed discursively and performatively in the voice, and are shaped and transformed by the voices that produce them. In collaboration with sound artists Inês Tartaruga Água and Francisco Antão we propose an understanding of musical objects/instruments as organic beings that function as extensions of the inner organs, the breath and the physical body, and which are activated through movement and gestures. Together with performers Luisa Alfonso and Alexandre Achour we work choreographically with ways to sing through and with bodies in space, beyond binary and exclusive categories of vocal registers and range.

Choreography and artistic direction Luísa Saraiva
Performance by and with Luisa Fernanda Alfonso, Alexandre Achour, Luísa Saraiva
Instruments Inês Tartaruga Água
Sound design Francisco Antão
Lighting Design Cárin Geada
Martial Arts Training Zeina Hanna, Manuel Pérez Bouza
Vocal Training Fabíola Fernandes
Executive Production Apricot Productions (DE) and Mariana Lima Costa / Calote Esférica (PT)

A production by Associação Calote Esférica and Crybaby GbR. Co-production Festival Dias da Dança/Teatro Municipal do Porto Rivoli.Campo Alegre; La Manufacture CDCN Nouvelle-Aquitaine; PACT Zollverein. Funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia/NRW Landesbüro Freie Darstellende Künste and Direcção-Geral das Artes/República Portuguesa - Cultura and Kunststiftung NRW. Supported by Residencias Paraiso, Colectivo RPM, Escola de Moda do Porto. This work was produced with the financial assistance of the European Union and implemented by Goethe-Institut. The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union.
Credits Dinis Santos

Presentations Festival Dias da Dança - Auditório Municipal de Gaia (Premiere) April 27th and 28th, 2024 Gaia (PT)

PACT Zollverein May 2nd and 3rd, 2024 Essen (DE)

La Manufacture CDCN May 22th, 2024 Bordeaux (FR)