Gonçalo Frota in Publico (PT) about The Rite of Spring. tender memories of queer affection

https://www.publico.pt/2023/01/11/culturaipsilon/noticia/dinis-machado-procura-individualidade-queer-sagracao-primavera-2034664

Dinis Machado in search of queer individuality in the Rite of Spring 

Continuing a series stimulated by the work of Nijinski, the choreographer takes to Teatro do Bairro Alto a re-writing of this seminal work for five bodies in search of their individual space.

It's not a rare situation. When entering the room to watch a show, it often happens that the public finds the performers already on stage, favoring the understanding that something is happening on stage that precedes the arrival (and, perhaps, extends beyond the departure ) of that specific group of external gazes. But, in the case of this Rite of Spring, reimagined by choreographer Dinis Machado (she/her pronouns), there is something more concrete that can be sensed when entering Teatro do Bairro Alto, in Lisbon, where the work is being presented from this Thursday (and until Sunday): the existence of a space with its own rules. Even more than that: a space where each of the five performers (MC Coble, Ves, Mia Meneses, Ali Moini and Sumi Xiaomei) seems to be governed by rules that only concern them.

More than any metaphorical reading of the piece she created with and for these performers, Dinis Machado, a Portuguese choreographer based in Sweden since 2012, wants to evoke "a progressive structural empathy in the spectator", as she explains to PÚBLICO. This means that, as the performance progresses, in its various parallel dimensions, those watching see themselves, slowly, entangled in the different layers of references that command the movements on stage. Different layers because the method adopted by the choreographer is based on linking each performer to "an audio score that they are listening to all the time and that poses problems". "There are times", she adds, "when this score gives them an instruction for the next five minutes, and other times when there are new instructions almost every second". And the instructions themselves are sometimes descriptions that one of the performers makes of the gestures of another.

It's a whole complex device – which performers know in advance, but with which they are not familiar enough to be able to anticipate everything that will follow – thought up by Dinis Machado in the sequence of pieces she has been working on (among which the solos Yellow Puzzle Horse and L'Après-Midi d'Une Faune) "around the work of Nijinski". A "paradoxical relationship", says the choreographer, about what attracts and repels her in figures like Nijinski. If, on the one hand, their works suggest "many relationships with queer bodies and experiences", they are nonetheless "narratives marked by very heteronormative ideas".

And therefore, in this Rite of Spring, subtitled Tender Memories of Queer Affection, no female figure can be seen as "the most beautiful, the chosen one who receives the right to dance until death". Dinis Machado is more interested in questioning "a kind of tragic premonition about the mainstream perspective that queer bodies are impossible". And where the original Rite of Spring, whose premiere changed the history of western dance, approached a space of celebration and ritual using unisons, here unisons do not exist because bodies are never equivalent – for cultural or physical reasons.

---

Thomas Olsson @ SvD about L'après-midi  d'une faune

https://www.svd.se/en-queer-faun-som-gackar-alla-etiketter/av/thomas-olsson-54TR 

L'Après-Midi D'une Faune (The Afternoon Of a She-Faun) 

A queer faun that eludes all labels

The faun embodied by the dancer Mandi Tiukkanen in Dinis Machado's version of "A faun's afternoon" is a searching figure. A faun who both seems to be sure of its identity and does not want to lock it in any position. In Dinis Machado's performances, the dancing body is not only in motion but also always in constant transformation. A body affected both by the room and by the situation it is in here and now, whether it is about political circumstances or, as in here, about more lust driven exercises.

At the same time, there is virtually nothing of a peacefully tripping faun on a journey of discovery in a forest glade to find here. On the contrary, it is a naughty and sometimes wicked smiling faun which, with strong straps, is fastened to a large and pinkish strap-on dildo on top of its blue wrestling suit. As part of a stage costume that literally highlights the physically strenuous, the athletic, it works surprisingly well. The unmistakable presence of something resembling a genital organ is there but does not, so to speak, hang in the way of the whole.

As in previous works, there are texts here that mix theoretical queer thoughts with concrete and everyday experiences, where a walk to the supermarket can be described as a walk through Hell while the home is one of the few safe and permissive places. This very safe and permissive room also characterizes Machado and Tiukkanen's "L'Après-Midi D'une Faune". Perhaps more like an experimental wearhouse, given sound by Godill, and which scenography mainly consists of an orange curtain that can be raised and sunk in the place of a glade in an imaginary forest. On a lilac background, the read text is projected.

In Mandi Tiukkanen, Dinis Machado has found a partner who, with her way of expressing herself and her physical figure, adds something to the choreographic material found in previous works. They have also danced together in the children's show "Inhaka" by the Brazilian choreographer and collaborator Elisabete Finger.

In "Normcore", which was shown at Weld in January 2020, among other things, Mandi Tiukkanen was one of five dancers in an equally playful and lust-driven piece. It was also one of their first works which Dinis Machado did not perform themself. "L'Après-Midi D'une Faune" explores another aspect of changeable bodies that refuse to be labelled.

---

Thomas Olsson in Svenska Dagbladet (SE) about Yellow Puzzle Horse

https://www.svd.se/eskapism-till-en-natur-dar-kroppen-ar-fri

Escapism in a nature where the body is free 

For the dancer and choreographer Dinis Machado, the dancing body is not only movement but also constant  change. A body affected by both the room and the situation it is in, whether it is about political restrictions,  gender identity or other playful practices more driven by lust. 

The new work "Yellow puzzle horse" is no exception. It is a complex and searching solo where Dinis  Machado (born 1987 in Portugal) continues to carve out their choreographic practice. An equally charged  and signifying aesthetics, where every detail or movement that is part of their work affects what happens,  and which was recently awarded with the 2020 Birgit Cullberg scholarship for young choreographer. 

The ability to communicate with objects, words, body and sound in a state where everything can be  questioned or renegotiated is something that has characterized the works of Dinis Machado that I have seen  in different places. For example, the series of works, "Barco dance collection", where a number of different  choreographers were invited to create short solos for them, were performed in or near various places that  have been important to Dinis Machado since they moved to Stockholm almost ten years ago. It could be a  lawn in Hammarby Seaport, the walkway outside a parking lot, a bookstore or a sweaty nightclub. 

In September last year, the solo "A dance for a dress in the forest" was presented in Värmland's Sjösala as a  work in progress within the framework of the regional dance residence Rural movements. 

For many of us, nature, whether it is a large forest or a city park, has taken on a new meaning during the past  year. As a refuge or a possible meeting place, the forest has in many cases literally become a new setting. 

Although it is not exactly the solo just mentioned that has moved into Weld's stage room, it is there as a  backdrop. Sometimes Dinis Machado wanders like a faun on a journey of discovery in a forest glade one  late afternoon. Dresses change, changes as new positions are explored, while wordless, loud mouth  movements seem to formulate something besides the pre-recorded lyrics or songs that are an important part  of "Yellow puzzle horse". 

The fact that the solo was created at a time when social distance is mandatory and when fellow human beings  are seen as contagious also makes it easier to see the escapist and slightly evasive traits more clearly than if  the circumstances had been different. Not least when everyone in the room except Dinis Machado wears a  mouth guard, it feels almost utopian to see someone move and dance so freely. And a little melancholic. 

Whether it's about their own body or that of others, Dinis Machado as a dancer and choreographer constantly  shows how changeable it is or can be. And how it can be (re) constructed with the help of a gesture, a pose, a  garment, or of a text or an object. Identity and gender are not left completely open, but they are uncertain, or  rather experimented, in different ways in "Yellow puzzle horse".

---

Konstnärsnämnden motivation post on warding the Birgit Cullberg Stipendium 2020

https://www.konstnarsnamnden.se/default.aspx?id=24304

This year's Birgit Cullberg stipendium was awarded by Konstnärsnämnden - the Swedish Arts Grants Committee - to choreographer Dinis Machado. The stipendium is awarded annually to a young choreographer.
Konstnärsnämnden's work group for dance has made the decision and the motivation is:

Dinis Machado’s remarkable work anchors the moving body to an idiosyncratic form of contemporary expression. In Machado’s embodied exploration of a politics of belonging, identity and materiality, they open a space in which each singular staged event transforms into a novel reality, a commons, a concentrated space of co-inquiry. 

At the intersection between dance and the visual arts they articulate a practice in which a simultaneous multiplicity of voices engenders a fundamental but oft forgotten truth of our collective humanity - that we are a locus of becoming rather than a fixed thing. In doing so, Machado and their dancers continue to question and expand the notion of what choreography is and how it can be utilized. Like Birgit Cullberg before them, Machado boldy crosses the boundaries of artistic media, mining the most relevant material combination, the deepest physical parameters, or specific aesthetic paradigm for a given work. 

Crafting within and through the concepts and practices of queer theory and politics, they provide a fundamentally altered iteration of what our bodies can be, the mechanisms of identification that they can bear witness to, let fall, or unfold. With tenacity, grace, grit and fortitude, Machado carves out an uncompromising practice within a multitude of contexts both local and international. They weave a web that merges art and socio-political practices, creating a world that is both a radical departure from the norm, and at the same time a new place to call home.

---

// Maina Arvas in DN (SE)about Normcore

https://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/fem-dansare-leker-tillsammans-i-ett-tryggt-rum/

Five dancers play together in a safe room 

In Dinis Machado's "Normcore", the audience gets to see sexuality and identity as play and metamorphosis.  Fun, nice and thoughtful, writes DN's Maina Arvas.

Normcore is used as a term for a fashion trend that involves dressing normally (Jerry Seinfeld is often highlighted as an example of this anti-style).  But also in a wider sociological sense about hipsters who long for group affiliation, suddenly want to blend into the collective instead of striving to define themselves as individuals with narrow interests and unique markers.  There is probably a circular movement around subculture, conventionality and avant-garde to ponder.

It is probably the second of the two meanings to which the title of Dinis Machado's work alludes.  Possibly it is most about blowing up or at least changing the core of the norm.  In "Normcore" from 2019, now with the Swedish premiere in Stockholm, there is a hopeful theme of transformation and development, to define about oneself, one's body and one's relationship to others, to be able to both stand out and be part of a community.

Five dancers play together in a safe room, the basement at Weld, illuminated with joint loops that draw volatile light lines above them.  They are wearing a body-close basic outfit of black workout clothes, beige underwear, latex tops, brown socks and nude skin, which they change with the help of attributes such as leg protection, toe tips, dildos, ropes and mc helmets.

We view sexuality and identity as play and metamorphosis.  There is an improvised air with plastic expressions, laughter, screams, noises, and a clear protocol or agreement to adhere to.  The group suddenly becomes horses.  Perform an unexpected ballet with the toe tips on your hands like animal paws.

Or flow into an act of group sex without sex, an exploration of gestures reminiscent of choreographer Mette Ingvartsen.  Humorous but in all seriousness.  An artistic instant interpretation of the mood is beautifully depicted in the middle of the stage: a large drawing by Edith Hammar with three figures covered by the artist's characteristic drops (sweat, saliva, tears or something that melts).

___

Margareta Sörenson in Expressen about PARADIGM

http://bloggar.expressen.se/scenbloggen/2016/01/dinis-machado-paradigm/

"Space, light, materials and objects - modernism, clean or "post" or even post-post, sets the style. Dinis Machado is in fact dancing, moving in and around a construction of super-thin plastic in a hanging frame, decorated with lights, so that both the audience and the performer are enclosed in one room. Initially, the entire frame is hanging in red and clear ropes from the ceiling, tied to the dancer's leg. When he moves, the thin plastic walls around us go up or down, eventually completely laying on the floor where the plastic slowly fills with air. But then, Dinis Machado already engaged in another and rhythmic dance of clear Asian influences.

Machado is Portuguese, and has done his Choreography Masters at the Swedish University of Dance and Circus. A team, Hanna Kangassalo, Robert Tenevall and Erik Sjölin, has composed the music for Paradigm. The Music, like the movement, moves from one thing to another, with voices and texts that grows into a musical and rhythmical interweaving. By now Dinis Machado has moved on to a homemade temple dance and the intention of creating a made up or privately constructed folklore becomes clear.

Here, Dinis Machado dances and embodies an hour long statement, about everyone's part in it all, about that a rite can be invented as well as transmitted, and about that a dancer/choreographer alone can do everything as in a time "before the split between the architect and the bricklayer". Also coming from modernism: the interest in folklore and "original sources" and the will to reshape them for their own use. It can be done again and again, and this time one curiously follows a persistently dancing body in a place of shimmering thin plastic."

___

Andrea Grapengisser in Kristianstadsbladet about PARADIGM

http://www.kristianstadsbladet.se/kultur-noje/marc-kivik-paradigm/

"The choreographer and dancer Dinis Machado was in artistic residency at MARC in Kivik. His latest performance "Paradigm" has been shown for two nights (22-23/1) at Tjörnedala Konsthall and at MARC in Kivik.

"Paradigm is a dance of an exoticism from nowhere. A ritual claim for difference and citizenship" (from the program text of "Paradigm")

A luminous frame with walls of fluttering and rustling plastic and a dancer with ropes tied around his foot meet us. The audience moves around freely in the room, sitting, standing, lying down and is clearly part of everything that is happening. The environment changes with the dancer's movements, the walls go down and the room becomes bigger. The music is strong, composed by the trio Hanna Kangassalo, Robert Tenevall and Erik Sjölin.

Sensations are conveyed through music, words, space, and body - a mix of folklore and science fiction were all the elements are interlinked and reborn. "The spider in the forest smashed into a unicorn that morphed into a table." The movements are rhythmical, small but intense, lips and hands move in spasms and walls fall, stretch, raise and are breached.

The Portuguese dancer and choreographer Dinis Machado (b. 1987), based in Stockholm, has a background in dance as well as in visual arts. In his work this art forms are being blend and in "Paradigm" concrete materials such as plastic are a clear part of the choreography.

Don't miss "Paradigm", by and with Dinis Machado, shown again this summer at Wanås, as a part of the collaboration between MARC and Wanås Konst."

Iva Nerina Sibila in TANZ about Black Cats Can See in The Dark But Are Not Seen

Originally from Portugal, Dinis Machado is currently based in Stockholm. Educated in dance, acting and visual art, he creates on the intersection of these fields. His poetics might be named “dramaturgy of labour”, since strategies of body-based visual art (installation, performance, happening) are put together with a combination of utilitarian gestures (like fixing the bike or painting the wall) and dance gestures. In Black Cats Can See in The Dark But Are Not Seen those actions are placed in a carefully built structure that is continually re-negotiated throughout the 75 min duration of the work, following Machado’s “fascination to provisory structures and nomad ways of life“. (...)

Three performers are operating this space, as one. The performing mode is introverted; no visible contact with the audience or one another. The dynamic comes from the progress of the performance material itself. (...)

The text is present during the entire performance; a stream of elegantly written letters and diary entries, covering a variety of ideas and concerns. Read by Cabechina, it is occasionally transferred into dialogue with Machado who keeps his physical actions going while developing the text. Signed “Yours, Dinis“, the text gives a level of intimacy and includes the audience directly in Machado’s somewhat introspective world. (…) He enters into reduced choreography, modulation of one phrase only. His skills and movement expertise, however, are captivating. 

Black Cats… asks for patient attention, but is enormously rewarding. Using the epistolary format, Machado takes the audience on a voyage that is intimate and personal, yet possible to connect to. It is a multilayered articulation of acute questions in choreography and performance such as conceptualization, fiction, nomadism, art-product, interdisciplinarity. “Let’s start in the middle….” says Machado closing Black Cats…“And we will stay there… to finish is a simulacrum.” and the audience follows this idea by keeping the discussion on offered themes long after the performers are gone. “