Utopia — Diana Niepce
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Utopia is a play that operates in the language of performance, with a strong component of dance and theater, developed in different times and spaces, in a dissonant dialogue in which the sound and text of the play is thought of as a work for people with disabilities visual, as well as vibration, a sound piece for the deaf.
The body does not exist without its history. Memory generates its language, and one does not exist without the other. Guardian body of your stories. Singular body that does not generate an imperfect copy of another body. The world that discriminates for being too normal is the same that discriminates for being too different. I don’t want to be a slave to the machine that dictates the image of what I should be. I came to tell you the end of the story of the body of the norm, that old woman who tells us that virtuosity is in perfection and forces us to hide the imperfections of the body, until we become photocopies of each other.
I won’t hide the crooked ears, I won’t hide the wrinkles, I won’t have surgery on my nose because it’s too big. I do not want to condone the oppression of the body and continue to hide the “deformations”, when they reveal possibility. I will tell you the story of the destruction of the utopian body. Here the body reveals its identity as a manifesto, the language seeks to reformulate the conventions of the performing arts vocabulary, the word spreads through listening that will bring its return. I am interested in the hierarchy of the body, diversity as a political gesture and the reinvention of the body’s poetic relationship with the world. The world and the body are performative devices of assumed activism that seeks a break with the various norms disseminated in the normative and non-normative body pattern.
Credits
Artistic Direction/Creation: Diana Niepce
Interpretation: Inês Coias e Rui Paixão
Technical Direction: Nuno Samora
Sound design: Diogo Melo, Gonçalo Alegria
Scenography: Franko B.
Costumes: Silvana Ivaldi
Photography: Alípio Padilha
Video: Wojtek Kaniewski
Production Assistance: Nuno Pratas
Production: Terra Amarela
Co-Production Residency: O Espaço do Tempo e Biblioteca de Marvila
Co-Production: Teatro do Bairro Alto e Teatro Municipal do Porto – DDD 2024
About Diana Niepce
Dancer, choreographer and writer, graduated from the School of Dance (ESD) and Erasmus at Helsinki Theater academy (Teak). She completed her studies with a Performing Arts Management and Production Course, at Forum Dança, Hatha-yoga teacher course and Master in Art and Communication at New university of lisbon (UNL). Creator of the pieces “Raw a Nude” (2019) with Mariana Tengner Barros, “12 979 Days” (2019), “Duet” (2020), “T4” (2020), “Anda, Diana” (2021) and “The other side” (2022). As a contemporary dancer and performer, she collaborated with Bail-Moderne with Company Rosas , Felix Ruckert, Willi Dorner, António Tagliarini, Daria Deflorian, La fura del baus, May Joseph, Sofia Varino, Miira Sippola, Jérome Bel, Ana Borralho and João Galante, Ana Rita Barata and Pedro Sena Nunes, Mariana Tengner Barros, Rui Catalão, Rafael Alvarez, Adam Benjamin, Diana de Sousa and Justyna Wielgus.
Published an article in the book “Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker in Lisbon” (ed. Egeac / INCM), the children’s short story “Bayadére” (ed. CNB), the poem “2014” in the magazine Flanzine, the article “Experimentar o corpo” in the performing arts journal Coreia, the book “Anda, Diana” (ed. Sistema Solar) and the short story “Broken and stinky, it’s the pebles.” to the Memorial Route of the Convent.
Jury of the 2018 Acesso Cultura prize, official Jury of the International screen-dance festival Inshadow 2018 and Jury of the application NCED – Eu solidarity 2021.
