Course led by João Fiadeiro in 2004

Real time composition : capturing the emerging real

The different approaches to improvisation that João Fiadeiro encountered during his years of training resonate with his preoccupations. The search for a performance form which will invent itself in the very moment in which it takes place, that is, in real time (instead of “re-presenting” with a time delay), became the major focus for his work from 1980 onwards. Since when, all the choreographer's works, but also the teaching workshops he has led since 1997, are run through by the following question: How can one, as a “performer”, conserve – or create – that “quality of ‘reality', of ‘truth', of ‘credibility' which a moment, a gesture, or a word has when it happens for the first time?” [J. Fiadeiro, D.-A. Guéniot, "La Danse en Solo" (Solo Dance), 2002, p. 117].

One is therefore in the presence of a “fragment of reality”, of a moment of “pure present”, impossible to reproduce or fix. Elaborated over the years – particularly in the course of solo research – the method of “composition in real time” offers a technique for making use of an capturing this emergence of reality, under the conditions found both during workshops and on stage.

« Une matrice à produire de la réalité » : sharing authorship of the performance

Applied to the production of a performance, the method of composing in real time puts great responsibility on the performer. Each performer is thoroughly immersed in the method during several months of preparatory workshops and needs to be capable of managing the different moments of the action he or she will improvise, in harmony with the group situation that is developing. Under performance conditions, the method acts as a “matrix for producing reality”, a device which allows unpredictable situations to arise, in the setting of a simple but pre-established dramatic framework.

At the scene, Fiadeiro reserves the right to react himself to the group situation. His live interventions might be with the aim of emphasizing a performer's action, for example by defining the space where it will take place by means of adhesive tape, or intensifying it with a video recording. He can also cause it to branch off by equipping a performer with an accessory which transforms the form and meaning of gestures and creates imaginary associations in its wake. The sound (music, voice…), also handled live, introduce effects of distance or intensification in turn.

As for the audience, they are responsible for the essential task of constructing meaning out of what they see. It is true that no fixed one-to-one significance can be conveyed in a show composed in real time, as it reconstructs itself constantly from life, performance after performance. In Fiadeiro's vision, performer, choreographer and audience co-create the performance's meaning continuously. This shared responsibility is, in the choreographer's view, one of the most important political and philosophical implications of the method of composing in real time.

Source : Annie Suquet, article "De la composition en temps réel", 2005

Updating : March 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.).

João Fiadeiro Blog about real time composition joaofiadeiro.blogspot.com

Digital Resource - médiathèque du Centre national de la danse http://mediatheque.cnd.fr/spip.php?page=mediatheque-numerique-ressource&id=PHO00003925