Josefa Pereira

A performance by Josefa Pereira | Light Design Josefa Pereira w/ Aline Santini (BR) w/ the collaboration of Daniel de Worm (PT)

Hidebehind is the monster that inhabits the dark forests without ever being seen. It has never been described and it is known for causing the disappearance of those who it captures. It has the incredible ability of always hiding behind those who dare to walk through dark forests or just behind the finest of trunks.

With insistent strides starts a twirl in an upside down journey. By evoking a continuum potential, and being moved through the dangerous soil that emerges from that, the performance tensions through seemingly opposite forces - front and back, beginning and end, presence and absence, reality and fiction, human and inhuman, north and south, etc. - until a cyclic force makes appear inhabited between spaces.

"What a figure was it that dared to walk backwards in a circle? The tone of subversion is because this simple movement breaks down a systemic logic. How many in history have died because of other movements? They were considered profane, heretics. Would it be a convention to walk straight and forward? What the white man does not know is that, equal to this figure, often himself only walks backwards or in circles. But unlike the white man, there seemed to be an intelligence in this figure. An intelligence equal to that of the crabs that walks from one side to other or of Uranus which is the only planet that has its axis of rotation practically in ninety degrees, having as reference its orbit, thus realizing a movement of rotation contrary to the one of the other planets, that is to say, anticlockwise. Perhaps for this reason it was considered by the Astrology as the rebellious planet of the changes, the planet that establishes the new. What was the intelligence of this figure? Why this movement that creates another relation between time and space? A figure that I could not identify it's gender by the tone of his body. Was it from a tribe I do not know? This figure had its skin painted pink in a manner similar to the indigenous who paint themselves with urucum. Where did that color come from? The curious thing is that magenta does not exist in the spectrum, it is an illusion provoked in the vision between red and blue. Was that why she was visible now invisible? Sometimes I also did not know if it was facing forward or backward. I also had little understanding of its sign language, some signs seemed familiar to me. Was it an avatar? Anyway, I saw this figure last night, I did not know if I was raving. I only know that when I woke up the next morning I began to see the world differently."
Bruno Mendonça

Josefa Pereira is a performer and choreographer. Lives in Lisbon (PT) and São Paulo (BR). She has been dedicating to authoring work since the bachelor degree in Communication of the Arts of the Body (PUC-SP), around interests such as collectivity, presence and gesture, always having the body as aesthetic and political field of exploration. Her trajectory is marked by the collaboration with several artists, in dance companies and also with Núcleo de Garagem and Ghawazee Coletivo de Ação, reinforcing one of the bases of her interests that is the making of art through different models of community. In partnership with Patrícia Bergantin she has created Mare (2017) and Jaw (2018) with whom she also organizes "Contagio", a way of operating around dance that promotes collective processes. Both projects now provides "Tectônica" as a platform base for the articulation and strengthening for their diverse artistic interests

Duration 40 min | This piece was concluded in the context of PACAP I promoted by Forum Dança (Lisbon)

Photo: © João Abreu