Michele Moura X Luiza Rosa = eyelid.

Around the workshop Partitura dos olhos (The Eyes’ Sheet Music), delivered by Michele Moura.

The afternoon was hot and was made hotter still by the orange sunbeams on the white walls of the rehearsal room at the José de Castro Mendes Municipal Theater. The light faded while we opened and closed our eyes following a sheet music. However, not only that. We had the clear sensation that our eyes were not only watching, but touching the environment.

On September 22, from 3pm to 6pm, Michele Moura and Clara Saito shared with about ten people the procedures around the creation of “Blink Mini-Unison Intense-Lament”, opened at the Sesc Dance Biennial. This sharing was called The Eyes’ Sheet Music.

Movements, observations: how the body responds, reacts, adapts, and transforms itself with movement and how it has its own rhythms. We began with the kundalini yoga breathing and, then, the proposal was presented: “You have five minutes to close your right hand, ok?” Five minutes sharp on the clock. The hand matter received new texture, the tendon was present and we noticed that there were hiatuses between stages in the movement. To close the hand was not a continuous act.

We were proposed a slow walk too, and the sensation returned. Tendons and toes touching the floor, there were hiatuses between stages in the movement. To walk was not a continuous act.

“With a metronome, we will order the opening and closing of your eyes like this: six seconds open; one second closed; four seconds open; one second closed. Three open. One closed. Two, one. One-one; one-one; one-one.” Later the exercise moved arms along with eyelids and, then, the walking around the room.

Blinking has a particular rhythm. It relates with other pulses such as speaking, finishing a sentence, closing a thought, chewing food, observing the unravelling of an action.

To follow an extreme pulse causes unbalance. We perceive our eyelids as the muscles they are, not as the supposed windows for the soul. The breathing and the tension all over the body were rather disturbing too.

“How beautiful, guys. I’d never seen so many people committed with the proposal. Thank you very much”, said Michele wrapping up the meeting.

Luiza Rosa: to blow she writes; to know she dances.

Chris Ritchie: to translate she knows; to dance she writes.