QUORUM

Through an open call, Horta asked for "people who know how to sing, dance, recite, play an instrument, or who simply have a great desire and vocation to be on a stage, even if they do not have any prior experience, to participate, voluntarily, in a creative project with a very strong community dynamic". 41 were selected. Forty-one individuals who make up soundscapes of voices and bodies in a piece that is, in the words of Rui, "an exercise in humanity". 

Horta has always been fascinated by the sense of community that emerges from a group of people who sing together, as one single lung. “I like choirs: people who gather together to sing outside of work. That’s where my desire to make a book about a community that respects diversity comes from. Doing it in Madrid adds the challenge of having to immerse myself in a culture that I have always been passionate about. I am looking for an intense experience because I am not a musician and many questions arise in this respect: What is a vocal piece? How am I going to approach this work? What are the limits for a performance art piece with "normal” voices and bodies? What is "normal"? How far can a body or a voice without any training go? What is authentic and what is something designed or constructed? How can we expand the boundaries of each one, knowing that the group is heterogeneous in terms of performative experience, without losing that lung that breathes in unison? Then another thread of connection appears: the body. As the Portuguese philosopher José Gil said: ‘The body is all we have’" - Rui Horta.

A year ago, the critic Afonso Becerra said about the last piece that Horta created with a community of people: “There are no poses, and I can’t see any falsehood, neither in the movements nor in the attitudes or expressions. I am impressed by the sense of artistic truth and authenticity that can be sensed in the atmosphere, on the stage. This lack of pomp and bombast, this transcended humanity that one can feel close by, that feeling of skin, that sensation that the action is occurring just beneath the skin and yet is coming from afar, from the intimate, from the depths, from the divine".​

RUI HORTA
  Rui Horta is a wild and forward-looking veteran. His work as a choreographer is considered a reference in European creation. Horta has been the driving force behind a new generation of Portuguese dancers and choreographers. In the nineties he directed the S.O.A.P. Dance Theatre of Frankfurt, touring the most important theatres of the world. And in 2000 he returned to Portugal to open Espaço do Tempo, a multidisciplinary centre for artistic experimentation housed in a 16th century monastery. At the same time, he has been a guest artist for a large number of well-known companies such as Ballet Gulbenkian, Grand Ballet de l'Opera de Genova, Marseille Opera, Netherlands Dance Theatre, Gothenburg Opera, Icelandic Ballet, Scottish Dance Theatre, Random Dance, etc. He has been named Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in France and he holds such international awards as the grand prix of Rencontres Choreographiques Internationales in Bagnolet (France).
  His creative work overflows from choreography and extends to theatre, opera, experimental music, lighting design and multimedia research, a universe frequently used in his works.

 

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CREDITS

Artistic direction, texts and light design: Rui Horta
Musical direction: Guillermo Bautista
Additional text: Tiago Rodrigues 
Technical direction: Tiago Coelho
Performers: Adrián Sepiurca Zukin, Nadal Bin, Alba Moreno, Álvaro Caboalles, Álvaro Manzano Olano, Ana Martín, Andrea Rus, Candela Caballero, Carlos Laguna Alonso, Carlos Indriago Ledesma, Carmen Colino, Claudio Gómez, Concha Contreras Iniesta, Corina Bustamante Márquez, Dan Cuadrado Martínez, Elias Miguez, Elisa Morris, Eugenio López Del Pino, Frances Ribes Renshaw, Gonzalo Figari Camino, Guille Pavón Gray, Jaime Cano, Jorge Padilla, Juan Antonio Rodríguez, Juan Bautista Alcalde, Juan Luis Peñaranda Acera, Laura Calero, Lucía Marceli, Natalia Katrina Serra Pineda, Nixón Martínez Salcedo, Olga Redondo, Pablo Velasco, Patricia Jorge, Paula Mendizábal Palacios, Roberto Bezos, Rosa García Camarillo, Chari Gutiérrez, Sandra Bermúdez, Sergio Salvador, Thalia Casher, Victoria Diéguez, Virginia Gallego
IN COLLABORATION WITH