di Gabriele FRANCIONI

Leilane Teles e Paula Sousa sono tra i 25 ballerini selezionati da Ismael Ivo per l’ Arsenale della Danza 2012, che terminerà il 17 giugno, per proseguire, dopo i successi delle repliche italiane di BIBLIOTECA DEL CORPO, con una breve tournée brasiliana a fine mese. Valentina Schisa, di cui vengono riportate alcune impressioni raccolte informalmente, è al secondo anno consecutivo di Arsenale.

Gabriele Francioni: Could you please tell us something about your background as a dancer?

Leilane Teles I started dancing in 2005 doing classical ballet and in 2008 I entered the “Fundaçao Cultural do Estado da Bahia”, a professional school, where I started studying modern, contemporary and popular dance, then I’ve moved here to Venice to grow and improve as a dancer…

Paula Sousa I’m from Brazil like Leilane, I started classical ballet at 15 years of age, then I graduated in modern dance at the Escola Bolshoi, Joinville (Santa Caterina, south of Sao Paulo) and then I moved to Austria at the S.E.A.D. in Salzburg (), then I graduated there as a Major in contemporary dance. 

Leilane Teles ©Antonella Menga

Given your brazilian cultural and professional roots, how do you manage to use your popular background positively and to not let it literally change your body and muscles too much? What do you take from such different types of dance as XAXADO, or the african SAMBA, AXE’, AFOXE’ and CANDOMBLE’?  In few words, is it  actually better, worse, simpler or more difficult being Brazilian, in a very Euro-centered context, for someone who wants to train as a contemporary dancer?

LT Like I said, after training as a classical dancer, I had my first encounter with African dances in the “Fundaçao Cultural do Estado da Bahia” and at first it was actually kind of difficult, despite my african origin as a black woman. From then on (2008), I started to feel more comfortable and let these influences grow inside myself. Now I feel good while performing popular Brazilian dances such as Camboclinhos, then other regional dances from the North East (Nordeste do Brasil) and the african ones. I had already studied in Bahia with Maria Thais during a stage previous to this year’s workshop in Venice and I can say that studies of afro-dances there go deeper into the matter. I felt comfortable with my body, really had no problem at all with my muscles, but I understand it’s very different for an European body. And because Maria was very detailed while teaching here, my mates have experienced some physical problems. For them training with the brazilian was as much difficult as with the japanese, indian and thailandese dances. Our bodies are different. I would say we are better in the waist, in moving our hips (gingado). They had difficulties, everything was new for them but at the end they reached a good level. Luckily, Maria, Terence, Ko and Plichet put up a very collaborative team, so, in such a situation, we continuously exchanged experiences and everybody learnt something from his/her mates. We really had to learn how to work as a GROUP!

PS For me it’s never been a problem…If you do the classical ballet you get a specific training, but then, for someone with our roots as brazilian dancers, is like having a different swing for dance in general. It’s not only a problem, but it’s a “plus”, so that I can have more swing and a different musicality, because brazilian music has this swing and because of that it’s different from all the others! And this plus, as Leilane said, is definitely in the hips.

What’s the peculiarity and specificity of Ismael Ivo’s set workshops compared to your previous ones? How is it to literally jump from Francesca Harper to Terence Lewis or from Frucek and Kapetanea to Murobushi in such a short period of time?                                                                                                               

LT I think it’s all good! I think professional dancers need to dance all kind of dances and need to understand everything. Francesca Harper is really different from Ko Murobushi… We start to work with our bodies like they have to be ready for Forsyhthe’s classical ballet and, at the same time, for the physicality of Klunchun and Murobushi and those incredible positions, such as some tough grand pliers. The dancer’s body, like I always say, must always be ready for EVERYTHING! Once we get out of here, and that’s the interesting point in it, we’re really ready for something peculiar we’ll be doing “outside”, after the Arsenale…

PS For me jumping from one stage to the other was a little bit tougher for the body than it was for the…mind. You adapt yourself to something one week, then you suddenly have to change and move to something completely different, but mindwise it was really nice, because then you can get the new movements much faster, to change faster than before.

Did you experience actual physical, muscular problems? We could literally see the pain on your face during Klunchun’s Open Door…!

LT Yes, it’s like that! Those incredible grand pliers were so painful that he let us leave temporarily the rehearsal for some minutes if we experienced some pain, some muscular problem etc, and I did so. But I liked both Klunchun and Borriello, which were so different.

PS For my muscles, though, it was actually quite hard.

Paula Sousa ©Antonella Menga

What would you tell the very young dancers to push them trying to apply for the Arsenale della Danza?

PS You will meet lots of different kind of dances and choreographers and Ismael is a fine choreographer himself and director and a friend. Then you’ll get to know a lot of different and interesting people, which probably is the most important thing in it!

Valentina Schisa

Incontriamo Valentina, al suo secondo anno in Arsenale della Danza, qualche giorno dopo Leilane e Paula. Valentina -si vedano anche i video su “Quarto Palcoscenico”- sottolinea come, nel suo caso specifico, la prima serie di workshop - 2011 - le sia servita principalmente per approfondire una cura degli aspetti tecnici in termini di applicazione dei diversi input coreografici alle possibilità fisiche del corpo (era, tra l’altro, appena reduce da un incidente di una certa importanza), mentre i laboratori di questa stagione le abbiano consentito un maggiore studio del corpo interiore, in particolar modo grazie a Thais, Murobushi e Klunchun.Valentina e gli altri danzatori di A.D.D. termineranno oggi la breve tournée italiana a Treviso, per poi volare in Brasile, dove presenteranno BIBLIOTECA DEL CORPO a Sao Paulo, a fine mese.

Programma Biennale Danza 

SITO UFFICIALE