Vera Mantero
The Thinking Body

The Thinking Body Vera Mantero’s process of work is in deep and close relationship with her particular understanding of the world and with her political and philosophical views on it. Thought, the necessity and almost obligation to think, is an intrinsic part of the work. Thinking our way of life, thinking society, thinking the systems in which we are involved. This means questioning, rethinking and experimenting in action alternatives to that way of life. The work is a tool to think and people attending the Coaching Project should be genuinely interested in thought. A non-hierarchical perspective of relations is fundamental. As is the idea that one individual is much less capable of achieving a vision than several individuals who join to think and understand something together. Therefore the working process is unconceivable in any other way than as group thought and group work. Believing that in western culture individuals are highly deprived of several dimensions in existence and that is a major for our cultural and ecological crisis, enlarging our possibilities of experience (in terms of states, relations with the surrounding space, objects and individuals and imaginary) is an important objective in the work. Maybe in other words: the politics of sensibility, spirit and the erotic, a need not only for social justice but also for creative justice. Relaxation, the use of voice, writing, breathing and free association are some means to be used in this Coaching Project, in order to find the movements and actions going on inside us. We will first explore some of them separately, in order to incorporate them later in longer and more complex improvisational processes. The idea of getting inside a particular state of consciousness will be very important. Awareness and use of space, as well as the exploration of objects and materials will not be forgotten. Irony and empty hands will take us further. "For me, dance is not a given fact. I believe that the less I acquire it, the closer I will be to it. I use dance and performance work to understand what I need to understand. I see less and less sense in a specialised performer (a dancer, an actor, a singer or a musician) and more and more sense in an especially trained Total Performer. I see life as a terribly rich and complicated phenomena and work as a continuous fight against the spirits' impoverishment, mine and others'. A fight that I consider essential at this point of history." Vera Mantero studied classical dance with Anna Mascolo and worked in Ballet Gulbenkian in Lisbon between 1984 and 1989. She started creating her own choreography in 1987 and since 1991 she has been showing her work all over Europe, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Singapore, South Korea and USA. From her choreographic work she points out her solos "Perhaps she could dance first and think afterwards" (1991), "Olympia" (1993) and "one mysterious Thing, said e.e.cummings*" (1996), as also her group pieces "Under" (1993), "For Boring and Profound Sadnesses" (1994), "Poetry and Savagery" (1998), "Until the moment when God is destroyed by the extreme exercise of beauty" (2006) and her latest piece "We are going to miss everything we don’t need" (2009). Vera Mantero participates regularly in international improvisation projects alongside improvisers and choreographers as Lisa Nelson, Mark Tompkins, Meg Stuart and Steve Paxton. Since the year 2000 Vera Mantero is dedicating herself also to vocal work by singing the repertoire of several authors and co-creating experimental music projects. In 1999 the Theatre Culturgest in Lisbon organised during one month a retrospective of her work created until then, which was entitled "Month of March, Month of Vera". "Eating your heart out", a work created in collaboration with the sculptor Rui Chafes, represented Portugal at the 26th Biennial of São Paulo 2004. In 2002 Vera Mantero was awarded the Almada Prize (IPAE/Ministry of Culture) and in 2009 the prestigious Gulbenkian Art Prize for her career as a performer and choreographer. www.orumodofumo.com