“This is my Body”: with this mechanical and haunting affirmation, João Fiadeiro examines and dissects a body which resists his efforts. A microphone stuffed into his mouth captures breaths that escalates into groaning; in contact with the skin, it strikes the body somewhere between pain and pleasure…trembling, beating, epileptic starts, swallowing and facial contortions, all of which are the stigmata of a body inexorably slipping away from itself: too present for the artist to let go of, yet too imperfect to control. A body that is exposed, burdensome, in search of a truth, an identity, an integrity…Alternating uncontrolled movements with almost sacerdotal moments of grace, an uncompromising performance by an atypical artist.

“My solo work has become a special area in which I can undertake a painstaking investigation of my reasons for continuing to dance, of my rapport with objects – always straightforward and easy to read – and my relationship with the audience, that abstract entity with which one maintains the illusion of a dialogue. I say simultaneously what I already know – the reaction (the opposite of action) is always more important – and what I don't know, via a personal, almost private exhibition of all my imperfections.”

João Fiadeiro

Digital resource - Médiathèque du Centre national de la danse
http://mediatheque.cnd.fr/spip.php?page=mediatheque-numerique-ressource&id=PHO00003863

Updating: April 2010

João Fiadeiro (1965) belongs to the generation of choreographers that emerged towards the end of the 1980s and who gave rise, in the sequence of the American post-modern movement as well as the movements of the French and Belgian Nouvelle Danse, to the Nova Dança Portuguesa [New Portuguese Dance]. A large part of his formation was carried out between Lisbon, New York and Berlin, after which he joined the Dance Company of Lisbon (86-88) and the Gulbenkian Ballet (89-90). In 1990 he founded RE.AL, a centre for research and artistic residencies, which not only constitutes the basis for the creation and diffusion of his work but also hosts transdisciplinary events and supports emergent artists by organizing laboratories and artistic residencies. He regularly teaches and present is works across Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia and South America. His research and know-how, accumulated both as a dancer and as a choreographer – namely through composition and improvisation techniques –, is taking him closer to the kind of research pursued within science (specially some of the research carried out in cognitive and complex systems science), as well as to the kind of work we can find in fields like economics or design. In the past years, he has been invited to give talks, master classes, and act as a coach in various institutions connected with those fields.

Source : João Fiadeiro's blog

Further information : re-al.org

Since 2001, the National Center for Dance (CND) has been making recordings of its shows and educational programming and has created resources from these filmed performances (interviews, danced conferences, meetings with artists, demonstrations, major lessons, symposia specialized, thematic arrangements, etc.).