In Teresina

I'm in Teresina as mentor to 10 artists participating in the coLABoratorium of the Panorama Dance Festival. Fabulous experience. But there is indeed a problem with Contemporary Dance. No one dances. When modernism in painting came about an occasional artist painted an entirely white painting, or a black painting. In the case of music I think it was John Cage who composed a piece of 5 minutes of silence... music bars void of notes. That was one artist. But in the case of dance most contemporary dancers are not dancing... they just talk, and walk and stare. For some reason it's not just one dancer... it's almost all of them. I don't get what's going on. In Brazil's case it could be an inferiority complex to want to be like Europeans... to be intellectual like Helena Katz. She seems to be the one who imported and distributed the 'word' into Brazilian Contemporary Dance. Now no one dances.