saturday 13 april – 9 pm
Cinema Modernissimo
Marcelo Evelin/Demolition Incorporada (Br)
The Invention of Evilness/A Invenção da Maldade
performance, supported by Xing/Live Arts Week, italian première
The Invention of Evilness/A Invenção da Maldade is the moment when evilness asks about its own origin and hears no answer, and where exactly this non-answer as a dark, impenetrable point, a hole in the world, is given a chance to speak. The space is raw and unpolished: a place where the bodies are traversed by strong political tensions and immediate precarity. Bodies are dancing in a floating atmosphere, a kind of desubjectified doing, an angelic non-presence that passes like a fluid through the flesh. Celestial infection? In Portuguese there is a difference between mal (evil) and maldade (evilness). The first concerns the evil in the world, the evil that is only produced by humans. Evilness, on the other hand, is something archaic, mythic, biblical. Something before or outside the world. Evilness is also something childlike, an innocence that doesn’t know its own ferocity. The invention of evilness thus sounds like a paradox, like an impossible moment of destruction and creation, where the one cannot be distinguished from the other. Like a darkness that resists the brightness of light by having a glow of its own. To evoke the invention of evilness at this time in Brazil cannot help to affect and be affected by the presence of political evil in the sense of mal. But this evocation is not a reaction to that evil. It is instead a diffuse and feral act of resistance, an affirmation of something intangible and unclassifiable, which rises like waves from the outskirts of the accepted. It is an event perhaps best described as the sensation of waking up in the night with one arm drained of blood and having to shake it violently into life again: an uproar of corporeality.
Marcelo Evelin born in Piauí (Brazil), is choreographer, researcher and performer. He lives and works between Amsterdam and Teresina. Based in Europe since 1986, he works in the dance field and collaborated with artists on various project from physical theater to music, video, installation and occupation of specific spaces. He is an independent creator with his company Demolition Incorporada, established in 1995, and teaches at the Mime School of Amsterdam, where he also guides students in creative processes. He directs workshops and collaborative projects in several countries in Europe, USA, Africa, Japan, South America and Brazil, where he returned in 2006, and since then he has also been acting as manager and curator, having deployed in Teresina, Núcleo do Dirceu, an independent artist collective and research and development platform for Contemporary Performing Arts (2006-2013). In 2016 he opened in Teresina, along with the cultural manager Regina Veloso, CAMPO, a new space for thinking, practicing and disseminating art and related disciplines, which is also the studio Demolition Incorporada. His performances Matadouro (2010) and Suddenly everything is black with people (2012) were presented in more than 18 countries, and are still on tour. With the participation of more than 300 performers of different nationalities, the performative event Batucada (2014) continues in diffusion. Sick Dance (2018), his latest creation, is inspired by the universe of butoh master Tatsumi Hijikata. The Invention of Evilness (2019) is its most recent creation.
concept and choreography Marcelo Evelin
creation and dance Bruno Moreno, Elliot Dehaspe, Maja Grzeckza, Márcio Nonato, Matteo Bifulco, Rosângela Sulidade
sound designer Sho Takiguchi
dramaturgy Carolina Mendonça
philosophy research collaboration Jonas Schnor
collaboration Christine Greiner and Loes Van der Pligt
photography and video Maurício Pokemon
production direction Regina Veloso/Demolition Incorporada, and Sofia Matos/Materiais Diversos
production assistant Gui Fontineles
agency and distribution CAMPO/Brazil + Materiais Diversos/abroad
co-production HAU – Hebbel Am Ufer, Mousonturm, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Teatro Municipal do Porto
support Rumos Itaú Cultural 2017-2018 Brazil, MIME School – Academy of Theatre and Dance Amsterdam, Xing/Live Arts Week
created in residency at CAMPO Arte Contemporânea, Teresina-Piauí-Brasil