La Ribot: "I have always worked on the margins"

Portuguese Inclusive Dance company Dançando com a Diferença will debut tomorrow at IDEM 2018, International Festival of the Arts, with Happy Island, recently premiered at the famous La Bâtie festival in Geneva, La Ribot (Madrid, 1962.

"I realized that it is a job for all audiences, it is visual and accessible, it is very beautiful, and the interpreters have a lot to do with the life given to the characters, I am very happy," says La Ribot.

Happy Island kicks off at the La Casa Encendida festival that changed its focus: it was once focused on disability, but now it opens to diversity.

"I have always worked on the margins, on what is not the norm and although I have never done it with a company like this, in my project 40 spontaneous, people appeared on the margins of one type or another." I co-produce Happy Island because I want it to be considered a project of mine and enter my circuit of presentations, we are closing presentations in Paris and Berlin. "

Happy Island has a lot to do with the way of being of the five dancers of the Inclusive Dance company that Henrique Amoedo directs. The five, with their different physical and intellectual deficiencies. "The work grew with their personalities," explains La Ribot. "It's very exciting, but not because my goal was this, but because they are very emotional," she says about Barbara Matos, Joana Caetano, Maria João Pereira, Sofia Marote and Pedro Alexandre Silva, their protagonists.

The luminous title, he says, "refers to both the wonderful island of Madeira and the idea of isolation (or not) of those at risk of exclusion." Happy Island takes place in the forest of Fanal, represented in the film that passes behind the scene. We imagine that all those who appear there are people from different cultures, "says La Ribot about this creation, which features music by Francesco Tristano, Jeff Mills and Archie Shepp, among others.

The piece, therefore, emphasizes the specialty of each one. "They are independent characters and the only thing that unites them is living in this magical world.

One of the dancers is a winged serpent, it could be Aztec. Another is a more Byzantine gold ball, a third interpreter would be something like a Sleeping Beauty, the only child is a faun, but dressed as Vivienne Westwood and the fifth interpreter is a woman in red."

"Henrique Amodeo, Telmo Ferreira [assistant choreographer at Happy Island] and all the teachers, perform a work of full inclusion, teaching the members of the group both to ride a bus, to count their money, to have autonomy in daily life, but also teach them how to live the body through art and dance ...and that's wonderful. I fell in love with this political and social work driven by Henrique, because he cultivates the love of life."

The Happy Island project began in June 2017, when Henrique Amodeo hired La Ribot to create a solo for three dancers of his company. Since then, the choreographer has not been parted from Dancing with Difference. "We have worked hard with your desires and dreams, because autonomy, which is what Henrique is seeking, is connected with desire, with sex, with being, with the desire to love, to participate and to of being individual. All taboo subjects that is where the essence of the individual is.

By: CRISTINA MARINERO, Madrid
in: www.elmundo.es