Guilherme Miotto: "Dance is an evolution, not a revolution" 

"We all want to play, but labels sometimes make that difficult. Then you start doubting your qualities." Instead, Dutch and Brazilian choreographer Guilherme Miotto (45) wants to break down boundaries and make art accessible to everyone. On Thursday 24 October, his double performance 'Unpunished Youth x Poles' can be seen at Festival Circolo in Tilburg.

Guilherme Miotto is more interested in what brings us closer together, rather than how we differ. He does not like labels or complicated dance moves and wants to bring out the instinctive movements we naturally master. "The body is already extremely technical," Miotto says. "For example, your hands already take the right shape every time you pick something up, even if you've never seen it before."

According to Miotto, we do not surrender enough to what the body can already do. He wants to change that with an approach he has been developing for 20 years and teaches at the Theatre Academy in Maastricht: Instinctive Performance. Moreover, as artistic director of Corpo Máquina Society and the ongoing project Unpunished Youth, he wants young people with and without art experience to discover their freedom of movement. 

Instinctive Performance

Miotto does not want to reinvent dance. He sees dance as an evolution, not a revolution. Development is therefore the main driver of his work, which he sees as the opposite of performance.

Miotto firmly believes that people thrive and take bigger risks when you give them the confidence that they can do something. For example, he never tells children that they are going to make theatre or learn dance techniques. "We all want to play, but labels sometimes make that difficult. Then you start doubting your qualities." 

Miotto actually wants to break down barriers and make art accessible to everyone. He does this by putting the body centre stage and giving a platform to young people from deprived neighbourhoods, some of whom have never heard of theatre before. He encourages his students at the Theatre Academy in Maastricht to surrender to what the body can already do. "We often focus on everything we can't do yet, but I advocate also looking at what we can do and building on that."

Gravity and vulnerability

As artistic director of Corpo Máquina Society, Miotto works on dance performances and System Hacks. In the latter, he tries to 'break the system' by putting people without years of experience or professional training on stage within just a few hours or a day. For the performance 'Poles' and system hack 'Unpunished Youth', Miotto works with three freerunners and 12 young people from the AZC in Oosterwijk who hope to start a new life in the Netherlands. 

The dance performance Poles was originally created for pole dancer Yvonne Smink. Due to an injury, the performance was adapted for three freerunners: Alex Fito Ayala, Ahmed Zariohi and Tim van den Bos de Lucas. Using freerunning (a sport in which the runner climbs and jumps gracefully through an urban environment), the youngsters play with gravity and vulnerability. Only this time, the 'obstacle' is not the city, but a life-size steel climbing frame. In the background, you can hear Isaac Poels' subtle music on the synthesiser.

Future plans

In the future, Miotto wants to keep doing this kind of System Hacks as often as possible, so that this new approach becomes more and more normal. Furthermore, he wants to keep working on his dance performances and take more time for this. "Because everything goes so fast, we can't always use everything from each other in a performance. And that's a shame, because there is so much richness in everyone. We often let time rush us, instead of making use of the time we have. Time is a gift, not an enemy."