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Posts tagged ‘Guilherme Garrido’

Oct 28

Friendship sometimes hurts

Martina Rösler

A dialog between two friends turns out to be an intimate, mischievous, brutal and barbaric meeting of two male bodies. They hit each other hard (while murmuring Mozart’s “Kleine Nachtmusik”) and at the same time one of them tenderly draws a heart with sweating fingers on the others skin, while embracing deeply.

The two young artists Pieter Ampe from Belgium and Guilherme Garrido from Portugal carry on their collaboration they started 2009 with the successful performance Still Difficult Duet. In Still Standing You they propose a rich spectrum of aspects that are implicated in masculine friendship and human relationship in general. They invite us to their playground – a place of violence and fragility where they “communicate” in a particular, unique way.

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Oct 27

“Still standing you” – too much for me

Theresa Steininger

There are things I certainly don´t want to see on stage. Two people beating each other with belts, jumping on each others bodies or pulling each others penises to a very unnatural length are among them. In „Still Standing you“, Pieter Ampe and Guilherme Garrido wanted, according to the program text, to find a new dance idiom which is distinct to everything else going on in contemporary dance – they have suceeded in doing that: I have not seen before many of the moves they have come up with in order to express enmity, friendship, rivalry and love – Ampe walking on the side of Garrido´s feet, the latter pulling one leg in front of the other while lying on the floor, so that the former can step on one after the other. Read more

Oct 27

Urban Fighting – Urban Loving

Iulia Popovici

It’s so entertaining. So unbelievably funny. So physically challenging. So powerful. Even if there isn’t much to think about in this revelation of what the human body can do.

Still Standing You by and with Pieter Ampe and Guilherme Garrido is, in fact, a follow-up – in this piece, the Belgian graduated student of P.A.R.T.S. and the Portuguese performer he met in danceWeb get together in the same formula they did three years ago, with Still Difficult Duet: a one-to-one struggle for power and love in the world of Alpha-males, with no other weapon but their own bodies. With no story and hardly any metaphors.

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Oct 27

Bread and Games

Dean Damjanovski

Violence and demonstration of masculine strength are inseparable part of entertainment. Since the time of the Roman gladiators and Japanese sumo-wrestlers till the American WWF the pleasure that the spectator gets from the clash of raw force on stage is a sensation that can not be compared to anything else. The protagonists Pieter Ampe and Guillherme Garrido in their “physical drama” titled Still Standing You offer themselves and their bodies for audience’s entertainment. Since the very beginning we see them on the full lit stage in a strange position – one of them lying on the floor with his feet straight up and the other sits on his soles. After establishing contact with the audience they say “Now we will perform our contemporary dance” as if they are saying “let the games begin”.

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Oct 27

Much Better Than Sex

Nóra Bükki Gálla
I always wondered how secret agents in films gritted their teeth but still kept their mouth shut when they were tortured in various inventive ways. They say it’s training, a kind of technique they learn about how to endure suffering, both in a mental and a physical sense. Pieter Ampe and Guilherme Garrido in their provocative and courageous duet of pain management are actually turning it all into a game. A game in which we cannot just stand aside and be polite observers.

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Oct 27

Still standing you, ampe and garrido

Julie Rodeyns

Still Standing You – Pieter Ampe & Guilherme Garrido (production: Campo)

In the duet “Still standing You”, the Flemish choreographer Pieter Ampe and his Portugese partner Guilherme Garrido constantly try to surpass each other. The result? A very entertaining farce that gives not only a portrait of a friendship but also raises questions about the strengths and limits of the physical body.

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Oct 27

Pickable Limbs and Curly Pubic Hair

Two overgrown preteen boys hurling, stepping on, pulling around each other in a mock-fight; or two WWE members wrestling with exaggerated gestures and mimics of pain and victory… At first glance, Pieter Ampe and Guilherme Garrido’s Still Standing You reminds you of such scenes; at second you think that no surprises, you get used to this “chubbies’ violence show”. But instantly you begin to feel that the two dancers’ never ending effort to take each other down, ride on and drag around is totally unrelated to violence or games: it is a restless and compelling quest to find their place and position within/towards one another.

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