Scottish artist Peter Davies created a series of paintings featuring texts that take art itself as a subject, making it subject and material to discuss the role of the artist in defining pop culture. In these text paintings, Davies transferred some of his personal rankings to the canvas. The hot one hundred. it's your private list of one hundred artists. It is a large and multicolored list headed by the North American video artist Bruce Nauman (number 01) and closed by the English painter Ivon Hitchens (number 100). In the line corresponding to each name mentioned, there is the title of the work or information about the work of the artist listed.

Cristian Duarte transported this procedure-list by Davies to his choreographic environment and “devoured” several dance icons, choreographers and pieces that instigated him to build a solo where the choreography is generated by the transit of references and body memory.

“This piece is not a representation of choreographic excerpts from other artists, it is an excerpt of the artistic trends that accompany me. My attempt is to reveal how the moving body negotiates with its own repertoire and memory. A kinetic archeology of my dance training. Furthermore, the show is also an open invitation to the public to join me in this “game”, activating their own repertoires and perceptions. I am more interested in the gaps, distortions, transformations and impossibilities of the experience that the work proposes”, explains Duarte.

The understanding of lists in this choreographic work was guided by reflections by the writer, philosopher, semiologist, linguist and bibliophile Umberto Eco, presented in his book “The vertigo of lists” – which reflects on how the idea of catalogues, lists, enumerations and inventories has changed over the centuries and how this change was expressed through literature and visual arts, giving other organizational and perceptual understandings to the lists.

The Hot one Hundred Choreographers seeks an experience of exchange between list and form, which does not guarantee a fixed place or valuation by numbers of its content. The piece cuts at the same time as it requests a series of et ceteras as it moves through a whirlwind of fragmented references.

In addition to the stage proposal, the project presents a website that provides links to the one hundred choreographer-works listed in this creation. It is worth highlighting that the way the list is presented on the website received the same conceptual treatment as the choreographic proposal. The “hot list” can be seen on the project website (link click on image below).

SYNOPSIS

The Hot One Hundred Choreographers moves an autobiographical list of one hundred references that mobilized the artistic trajectory of dancer and choreographer Cristian Duarte. The solo invites the audience to navigate an index that reveals a body negotiating with its own repertoire and memory. Hot 100 is made up of references ranging from classical to pop, from Isadora Duncan to Michael Jackson. From Lia Rodrigues to the German expressionism of Mary Wigman. From Bob Fosse to Vera Mantero. From Pina Bausch to Lennie Dale with Dzi Croquettes. In addition to the stage proposal, the project features a website that provides links to the one hundred references listed in this creation.

CREDITS

Concept, Creation and Dance: Cristian Duarte
Collaboration: Rodrigo Andreolli
Lighting: André Boll
Track editing: Tom Monteiro
Website design and concept: Cristian Duarte and Rodrigo Andreolli
Webdesign and programming: Roberto Winter
Hot contributions: Bruno Freire, Júlia Rocha and Tarina Quelho
Costume design: Cristian Duarte
Photography: Carolina Mendonça
Support/Thanks: Artist Faculty program at School of Dance – Herberger Institute at Arizona State University/USA, Simon Dove, Universidade Anhembi Morumbi, Valéria Cano Bravi, PUC-SP – Artes do Corpo, Rosa Hércoles, Peter Davies and more than one hundred choreographers .
Originally produced for the 15th Cultura Inglesa Festival
APCA Award (São Paulo Association of Art Critics) 2011 – Creation in Dance
Award for best dance creation at the 15th Cultura Inglesa Festival

“In their own way, practical lists represent a form, as they give unity to a set of objects that, however inconsistent they may be with each other, obey a contextual pressure, that is, they are related because they are all or expected to be in the same place or because they constitute the end of a given project…A practical list is never incongruous, as long as the inclusion criteria that regulate it are identified”.

Umberto Eco in The Vertigo of Lists.

[2011]

THE HOT ONE HUNDRED CHOREOGRAPHERS