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Agora

Running and walking linearly, until finally dancing from side to side while saying the following text with music:

Now,
- what a strange word "now"
loaded with impossibility
and yet necessary
indispensable-
So I say "now"
as if opening a door inside of me

Now
the door where the present arrived
and the presence was and was
no longer exists
and at this time
it doesn't sit well with me to ask
if I myself exist
under or over the door
where no one goes
now

I ask, therefore
to the nobody who surrounds me on all sides:
who inhabits me?
who inhabits this desert from which I deserted?
what words does the landscape speak
that was text before it was invented
my rough, cursive writing?

And what time this space
one step away from me dwells?
Yes my love,
the body I inhabit
and the body that inhabits me
have become categories of time

Time suspended between voids and tides,
mark, shore, sea time
however, from an inland sea
- that pocket sea you hear
when you put a shell to your ear
and which is nevertheless immense

There's room for crying, laughter and silence
there fits the memory and the memory of the memory
there's everything I think about
it's mainly what I haven't thought of yet
and yet walk towards me
just approach the surf zone
and wait for the waves…

You know, my love,
the sea being the place where the dream becomes giant,
there are no giants capable of trampling me
instead of the sea in me
who inhabits me and where I inhabit

And if there are things that exceed me
in size or weight
I cling to them
to make sure you're not being dreamed of
by an unknown

So the sea in me confirms that I still exist
that I wore the dress that makes me look from the outside
and for reasons of high seas that escape me
I stay afloat
and browse in sight
losing myself in the exact measure
where the other half awaits me
and call me

Did you notice that all my geography
-mountains and valleys, plateaus and plains,
fountains and rocks and paths and abysses-
finally came down to a smoothness of body
because at this time
the question is no longer the verb to become flesh
but before the skin becomes page

Have you noticed how the waves travel
and debauch
what is said
that was left blank
limp of sense forever
frothing and frothing endlessly

And there,
halfway and between here and there
that I sleep and wake up
in the obsessive arms of a water
that doesn't stop giving birth to think

And I don't believe, my love,
may there be more tides than sailors
just more faces than mirrors to copy them
more splinters than whole spirits

-Regina Guimarães

2017, Isabel Barros (com VÃtor Rua), Agora, Ciclo Olhar a Eternidade, Cooperativa Arvore, Porto. Photo: Daniel Pires.

Isabel Barros

Isabel Barros is a choreographer, director, co-founder of balleteatro (1983); she has been artistic director of Teatro de Marionetas do Porto since 2010 and of the Museu das Marionetas do Porto, which opened in February 2013. Her work exists at the crossroads of artistic languages, namely dance, theater and puppetry. She became interested in creating programming moments linked to dance, theater and performance, privileging transversal and alternative forms and dedicating moments to emerging creators. She received the Almada award (1999) attributed to balleteatro, as a distinction for the work carried out in terms of programming. In 2014, she created the Festival Corpo + Cidade, dedicated to performance in public spaces. In 2018, she received the Municipal Medal of Merit - Gold Degree. Porto is her city of origin and choice, where she develops her work with a sense of urgency and a strong social dimension.