Even Worse – Guilherme Miotto

On Thursday the 12th of october 2017, the Brazilian choreographer Guilherme Miottopresented his piece Even Worse in De NWE Vorst in Tilburg. This piece is a trio composed by Shane Boers, Simon Bus and Evangelos Biskas, three striking dancers from both the urban and the contemporary world, who are this time put into a theatrical staging (a different context from the one they are used to work in).

In this piece, the three dancers on stage were only wearing shorts and sneakers, a revealing outfit that exposed their defined and strong personal physicality.

Although, as previously said, they come from different backgrounds, that did not stop them to execute the same movements. It is true that they performed those movements in a different way – for example, the two breakdancers (Shane Boers and Simon Bus) performed differently from the contemporary dancer (Evangelos Biskas). Being a contemporary dancer did not stop Evangelos Biskas from doing the same handstands and cartwheels as the other two dancers. Even though it was not the main point (as Miotto does not have a tendency to anecdotal performances) this piece evoked many times the laughter of the audience, sometimes because of the movemetns the dancers were performing, but mainly because of their facial expression.

In terms of structure, there were groups phrases (in which they would all do the same in the same rythm, sometimes with slight changes in a certain movement or freeze), duets (being the other element of the group performing a solo and the other two looking or moving the lights on stage, or the other way around) and solos (in which each of them showed the best of themselves, their style and movement quality – for example, Simon Bus performed many contortionist movements that come from breakdancing).

The music was only composed by sounds and noises that the the audience could not understand where they came from (at least in the beginning).

For this work of Guilherme Miotto, two towers of light were used on stage, which the dancers moved during the choreography. The change of light deviated the attention of the public to a specific place or moment of the choreography, but it also changed the spatial arrangement: when positioning those towers in different places of the stage, the dancers would create dark areas on it, creating the illusion that the stage was getting bigger or smaller (according to where they would put the lights).

It was a very physical performance that required a lot of strength from the dancers, leaving them sweating and heavily breathing in the end of the choreography. All this effort leads to a choreography with some breathtaking moments that impressed the audience in many ways.

What particularly caught my attention in Even Worse was the different movement qualities of the three dancers. It is not very common to see performances that have hiphop and breakdance as its basis nowadays, much less having a contemporary dancer performing movements of both those styles. Although Evangelos Biskas executed them differently from Shane Boers and Simon Bus, in my opinion that gave a special touch to the overall choreography, and for me that I went to the performance without expectations, this was an essencial tool for the success of the show.

However, both light and music had an uncomfortable effect. In the beginning, the noises of the music confused me, but during the piece as a member of the audience I started to get more and more comfortable with it. In my point of view the light design was very well planned, creating different perspectives of the stage, but I cannot say that I was totally comfortable with it at all times. It brought the funny factor to the show, for example, when the dancers used the lamps as a kind of camera and started to pose in front of it. Nevertheless, when the dancers pointed the light directly to the audience, a general discomfort was felt. Even though this was probably the aim of Miotto (so that the audience would understand the vulnerability of the dancers when they are on stage with these lights), I could not see the performance during that part. Despite this, the light design as a whole worked for me.

I can consider Even Worse a very pleasant work of Guilherme Miotto. Very technical, very powerful, extremely interesting and intriguing. I am looking forward to his next project.

Benedita Crispiniano DM1