After spend­ing two weeks with the “Accueil-stu­dio” pro­gram in the CCN, Por­tuguese artist Catar­ina Mir­anda will present Atsumori, a work in pro­gress which is part of her new piece. The piece, made for 5 dan­cers, was inspired by nô theatre and it com­bines dance and light design. 

Catar­ina Mir­anda is a trained cho­reo­graph­er and visu­al artist who is known for her install­a­tions as well as her dance per­form­ances in which she works on image, move­ment, voice, sceno­graphy and light­ing. Mir­anda also stud­ied nô theatre in Kyoto, which is the main inspir­a­tion for her new piece. The name Atsumori comes from a Japan­ese nô play writ­ten in the 15^th cen­tury in which the ghost of a war­ri­or child killed in com­bat wanders on the bat­tle­field hop­ing to find ven­geance before com­ing to terms with his new iden­tity as a ghost. Mir­anda uses the codes of nô and the archetyp­al dimen­sion of its dra­mat­ic struc­ture to rework the nar­rat­ive in an abstract and power­fully aes­thet­ic way. Bod­ies wear shield-masks and stride along the space as if it was occu­pied ter­rit­ory, inhab­ited by memory and the rhythms of a fic­tion­al ima­gin­ary, haunted by past and future social con­structs. The cho­reo­graph­er works on a lumin­ous stage to wel­come the five per­formers of this ambi­tious piece.

Catar­ina Miranda’s’Accueil-studio’ res­id­ency is part of the dual res­id­ency pro­gram co-organ­ized with Porto’s Teatro Rivoli (where Calixto Neto was hos­ted this year) since 2018.