Vontade de Ter Vontade

The latest creation by Portuguese choreographer Cláudia Dias, Vontade de Ter Vontade, is a pathway where individual, collective, personal and historical dimensions coexist in the same space. One sole inspiration from two works, by the writers and thinkers Tony Judt and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, which is equally autobiographical and political, an intervention, representing a micro-sized reflection on what can be done. According to the artist, the work sketches a panoramic view of modern-day Europe (and the world), accentuating the relationship between north and south, between coloniser and colonised, between the centre and the periphery. It is also a manifesto against the inevitable.

Cláudia Dias calls for the responsibility of not giving up in a composition that prolongs her work on identity and territory from One Woman Show (2003), Visita Guiada (2005) and Das coisas nascem coisas (2008), performances that serve to reaffirm one of the most important artists in contemporary dance from the third generation of Portuguese choreographers, who learnt from those that began Portugal’s Nova Dança at the end of the 1980s and who continue travel on the road opened up by those before them.

Cláudia Dias (Lisbon, 1972) begins her education as a performer in the Almada Dance Group and Ninho de Víboras Collective. She works with RE.AL in the creation strategy of João Fiadeiro and his Composition in Real Time Technique (CTR). Her work as a choreographer and performer, between visual arts and dance has been welcomed by a number of national and international institutions, theatres and festivals.