“Corpo que canta” is a multidisciplinary performance that explores and questions the body and its surroundings, a sometimes dysfunctional, urban, mechanistic nature, in a liberating dialogue of the senses, of the human being. The starting point for this project is the work “En Echo” by Philippe Manoury, based on poems by Emmanuel Hocquard, for soprano and real-time electroacoustics, framed within another sound creation, commissioned from the Portuguese composer Mariana Vieira for soprano, electroacoustics and cello. This sound and performative construction inspires the movement of bodies evolving in an architectural scenography of light, which envelops performers and audience, in a stage device that takes shape as a total performance. Human voice, body and artifice: what attracts us, deludes us, moves us or distances us from the digital reality with which we increasingly relate. Artistic sheet Creation and Performance Natasa Sibalic – artistic direction Nélia Pinheiro – choreography Mariana Vieira – composition Nuno Mika – projection Anabela Gaspar – lighting Natasa Sibalic – voice (soprano) Maria Nabeiro – cello Rafaela Nunes – dancer Sara Gomes – dancer Natasa Sibalic, on the creation I am a vocal artist with lyrical training and a long career dedicated to chamber music, opera and other vocal genres. I have always been drawn to works whose internal dramaturgy inspires staging and the possibility of breaking out of the strict concert format. Particularly some creations for soprano and variable instrumental geometry by composers such as Dusapin, Morton Feldman, Isidora Žebeljan, Philippe Manoury, among others. I seek an organic and multidisciplinary expression of thinking about what music inspires in us and it promotes the natural involvement of artists from other performing arts. Voice as a vehicle that — always through music — transforms and induces poetry, theatre and movement. This is the first project of a cycle that will take shape as a kind of laboratory. For it we have invited an architect to create environments, scenarios and characters of light, a composer, a choreographer, dancers and an instrumentalist. And also, for now and perhaps not by chance, a creation by women. Mariana Vieira, on “Rasgar o Tempo”
In the piece “Rasgar o Tempo” the poems “Viagens e Desvios” by Ana Luísa Amaral and “Forever – is composed of Nows” by Emily Dickinson were used. When I began the composition process of this piece, I already had the idea of using texts that reflected on the experience of time. These two poems in particular interested me because they allowed me to place side by side two ways of experiencing time that, although apparently contrary, can coexist. On the one hand, time as a sequence of present, organic moments (Dickinson); and on the other, and nevertheless, the difficulty of its passage through the uncertainty of the future (Amaral). Musically, I wanted to explore electronic processings that, in some way, cause a disruption in the temporality of musical events (through granular synthesis, delay and reverberation techniques, among others). I also sought a writing that reflected the nature of the texts used, oscillating between a more fragmented and noisy writing, and a more melodic one. Philippe Manoury, on “En Écho” After working in different interactive ways between the instrumental world and that of new computer technologies, the question of the voice arose. The voice is not an instrument in the strict sense; in fact, its sound production does not depend on artificial mechanisms. In this case, therefore, it is a matter of capturing a sound signal — extremely complex and variable — and synchronizing it with a computer. The sound signal in question exceeds in complexity what we knew of the instrumental world. A voice produces pitches, but also phonemes, noises and a spectral variability very much in motion. (...) In some cases, the goal is to synchronize the processor with a simple spoken voice, ignoring any connotation of musical pitch; in others, to detect certain characteristics (such as noisy sounds) of the vocal emission; in still others, it is the melody that is at the center of interest, etc. The different categories are, in turn, called upon to establish a sensitive relationship between voice and machine. It is this polyphony of behaviors that we need to detect.
Synchronization is the first step, but the capture of complex phenomena, such as the variation of spectral forms, the recognition of phonemes or of certain microstructures, whether with a view to establishing control networks in a synthesis or signal processing device, is the problem that confronts us. The musical material is composed exclusively of synthesized sounds, vocal samples and real-time transformations of the solo voice. I have never separated experimentation from my compositional work. In this specific case, experimentation is even the rule. Instead of using already written and completed texts, the idea of an active collaboration with a writer seemed more fruitful to me. And it is in this spirit that Emmanuel Hocquard and I conceived our work. The texts he provided me are poetic material that I work with according to the imperatives that guide me in composition. Although all the sentences are by Emmanuel Hocquard, the text in its current version is my choice, from a broader material. Nothing was defined a priori, except that all the texts have a transversal theme involving an erotic relationship. Philippe Manoury, Les Cahiers de l'Ircam, coll. Compositeurs d'Aujourd'hui no. 8, Paris, 1995.