Vera Mantero is probably the most important choreographer of the Portugal dance scene of the nineties. Although she is no stranger to the Slovene audience, her earlier solo creations --which enter the dark sphere of the inexpressible-- will undoubtedly be a surprise to many. The gap between the depth of inner feelings and the impenetrable sheath of external expression, evident from the beginning, widens and produces intense pain. Its intensity makes the pain not only bearable, but also a source of aesthetic pleasure.
The artist, born in 1966 in Lisbon, discovered dance in her early childhood. She became a ballerina, but was soon to discover the boundaries of classical dance. Although she worked with the Ballet Gulbenkian for five years, it was only with her stay in New York that she completely abandoned classical training. Consequently, she expanded her expression, moving it in the direction of theatre, connecting it closely with speech and music.
To Vera, the dance vocabulary seems simply to poor to be able to display that side of the inner being which doesn't contain only pleasant things. Instead of using the term dance performances she prefers to call them simply performances or spectacles. The lion's share of her many times awarded "creative despair" lies in her solo performance.
One mysterious thing, said the e.e. cummings is
an homage to the tropical siren of the Parisian cabarets of the 1920s,
Joséphine Baker. It could be simply called: "Everything
you ever wanted to know about Joséphine Baker, but never dared to
ask." Joséphine was a black dancer, singer and actress (Zou-Zou
and The Princess Tam Tam) from a poor American family. She became famous as a
dancer in the once notorious Folie-Bergere. During the war, she collaborated
with the French resistance and remained an active human rights activist
afterwards. She became the surrogate mother of twelve children in the Rainbow
Tribe community. In 1975, in Paris, she was the first woman to be buried with
military honours. When Vera Mantero was offered to make a choreography dedicated to Joséphine Baker (one of the selected choreographers was also Mark Tompkins), she used the words of Joséphine's compatriot and modernistic poet e.e. cummings who described her as:"one mysterious thing, neither primitive or civilised, or beyond time, in the sense that emotion is beyond arithmetic". The Joséphine of Vera Mantero confronts us naked, balancing on the brink of being, beyond the glitter and the wild erotic. She is tragically bound to this world, as every moment in human life is.
Critics commented:"Olympia awakes, weary from
dreaming. She had a bad night, that is evident. Insomnia and colic have
disturbed her serenity; her colour indicates as much.". Or:
"...this Olympia, a sort of female gorilla, grotesque in India rubber
outlined in black, on a bed, in a state of complete nudity, ...". And:
"The auguste jeune fille is a courtesan, with dirty hands and wrinkled
feet...". The year was 1865. Their critique was addressed at Eduard
Manet's depiction of Olympia. The model for his impressionistic painting was
Victorine Meurent. "A prostitute and a drunkard or a bald and defiant
artist?" asks the feminist art historian Eunice Lipton. Olympias the
wife of Philip II of Macedonia, could have provided the historical reference to
Manet. It is said that Alexander was begotten by Olympias and a divine serpent,
and that she had her husband's mistress Cleopatra killed, together with their
daughter.The Olympia of Vera Mantero is a unique paraphrase of Manet's painting. A five-minute palimpsest mixture of the impressionistic Olympia and extracts from the book L'asphixiante Culture by Jean Dubuffet is "funny and ostentatious" (Libération), a bizarre interpretation of the simultaneous views of the reader/actor/model.
Mantero never takes dancing
for granted. To dance is for her never something obvious. Why dance? There is
always that question mark. "What does dance say? What can I say with
dance? What am I saying when I'm dancing?" In her improvised solo
Perhaps she could dance first... and think afterwards she thematises
these creative questions. In her performance, awarded at the Mudanças
festival in 1994 and at the Rencontres Choréographique de Bagnolet in
1996, she transforms the experiences of her inner being into motion. Thus
movement comes before the thought, before the word, before the beginning and at
the end.