Zona Franca: Está Visto

A dancer who couldn’t dance, a singer who couldn’t sing, an actor who couldn’t act, a writer who couldn’t write, a painter who couldn’t paint. A dancer who sang, a writer who painted, an actor who wrote. One had to know how to do in order to know how to be. As long as the fine lines that separate being from doing, the self from action, the thing from the subject, remain blurred, something remains unfit and dysfunctional. A monster that does not fulfil its function.
— João dos Santos Martins, 2022

The Zona Franca cycle welcomes Está Visto (2023), a show resulting from a collaboration between João dos Santos Martins, pianist and composer Joana Sá, and visual artist Ana Jotta. Based on the song cycle Dichterliebe [Poet’s Love(s)], composed by Robert Schumann in 1840, the piece is presented in recital format, seeking to have the practices of singing, piano and dance interact and overflow into one another. The romantic songs, with poetry by Heinrich Heine, speak of unrequited love. This lack of reciprocity is reproduced in choreographic ideas that disarticulate language, fracturing gesture with the lyrics of the songs, sound and listening in a body in transition.