Dance of Inert Materials

About the Collection “Dance of Inert Materials”

Dance of Inert Materials is a series of installations and performances authored by choreographer and dancer Marta Cerqueira and pianist and composer Simão Costa. Each piece explores and investigates the dimensions in which Sound transforms into Movement and Movement transforms into Sound, proposing a choreographic, kinetic, and musical perspective on inert things. This generic and apparently abstract statement has led these works of transdisciplinary artistic creation to a contemplative posture, seeking inspiration in things that humans tend to consider "inert," with special attention to geological aspects and the biotic potential of plants.

Geological movement over millions of years follows a choreography. The stones are the dancers, who is the choreographer? The potential of a seed may be zero, but when it germinates, it seems to have a well-coded and planned choreography.

This explosion of temporal perspective to temporally long scales, such as the slow growth of plants, geological or astronomical movements, allows glimpses of movement and life in things that, on the scale of a human life, seem immobile or dead. On the other hand, the human species seems to have been "promoted" to "geological force" (Anthropocene), so much so that it has been able to mobilize energy, drill, mine, transform, and mobilize its terrestrial and even extraterrestrial environment.