| The first platform about memory centres on the new project "Olhos d'água" by dancer and choreographer Ismael Ivo. Ivo's research into the cultural currents of the Black Atlantic is based on oral history and movement. He is interested in "improvisation as a language", with commentaries by three important black women, all aged about seventy. Mae Beãta, a priest, lives and works in Bahia, the centre of the Syncretic religion candomblé, which is far more than a belief system. It is also an attitude towards life, a way of managing everyday life in coexistence with a variety of cultures. Jazz singer and dancer Othella Dallas was supported by the famous dancer Katherine Durham and has appeared on stage with performers such as Josephine Baker and Sammy Davis Jr. during the course of her long career. Her involvement in the liberation struggle took Tereza Santos (actress and director) from a Brazil ruled by a military dictatorship to Guinea Bissau and then to Angola. The power of living memories embodied in these women is inspirational. Their histories provide the starting point for improvisations by eight dancers and performers whom Ivo and Brazilian director Maria Thaìs have brought together from very different areas: HipHop, Capoeira, and classical and modern dance. They join forces in a search for hidden memories and experiences that are imprinted in their bodies: from memories and experiences involving "fear, darkness and blindness" to communication through signs and sounds; from the transformation of religious narratives to spiritual and cultural identity as triggers of revolt. Olhos d'água examines the memory of the body and the process of remembering as resistance and self-assertion.
Concept and Choreography: Ismael Ivo
Director: Maria Thais Lima Santos
Music: Steve Shehan
Storyteller-Performer: Mae Beata/Rio de Janeiro, Tereza Santos/São Paulo, Othella Dallas/Memphis
Dancers: Ismael Ivo, Cristina Perera, Catherine Womba Tolopu, Apolo Franca, Rafael Luiz Nunes, Edsel Scott, José Antonio Roque Toimil
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