From November 7 to 11, 2022, the laboratory Practices of Excess and the Rigor of Explosion was held at Graner with Marcela Levi & Lucía Russo / Improvável Produções, Graner’s 2022 residents selected through a public call in the practical methodologies category. The lab was preceded by an open call to select a group of 19 participants and was accompanied by João Lima and Bárbara Raubert, who produced a joint report at the end of the process.
Marcela Levi & Lucía Russo are a duo of choreographers. In 2010, they founded Improvável Produções in Rio de Janeiro—a nomadic space for training, research, and creation. They embrace a polyphonic direction in which different inventive positions intersect in a process that welcomes deviant lines, dissent, and internal differences as constructive critical force rather than self-excluding polarities. The work of Improvável engages with an experimental aesthetic that emerges from a unique encounter with the impasses of Brazilian society. There lies a rigorous effort to, instead of succumbing, transform entanglements and tensions into the very substance of artistic production. Improvável is responsible for the conception, creation, and production of dance pieces such as Naturaleza Monstruosa (2011), Mordedores (2015), Boca de Fierro (2016), Let it burn (2017), HARM-ONY (2018), and grrRoUNd (2021), among others.
Let practice speak to us and discourse be practiced. We will work with repetition—or rather, with frequency. We will frequent/pass through the same exercises every day without ceasing to un-know them. After all, during rehearsals and performance runs, isn’t that what we do? Don’t we frequent/pass through the “same” places while preparing ourselves to be unprepared?
