Matteria

Matteria is a transdisciplinary dance company dedicated to performance, art, research and pedagogy, founded by Sara Willa and four co-creators in 2019. The following projects (La Extrañeza, AGÜITA, and ÁNIMA) are co-creations that involve sculptural works by Sara Willa. The company aims to use dance as an eco-political, affective, and pedagogical tool.

La Extrañeza (2022)

La Extrañeza (Estrangement) is a performance involving the collaboration of found object assemblages that become protesis for different sonic and spatial relationships. Attempting to relate to other material bodies from a state of permeability and curiosity, choreographic possibilities are developed by observing and incorporating the textures, sounds, and rhythms of each material assemblage. Imagining other possibilites beyond prescribed modes or meanings, La Extrañeza is an experiment that asks: what happens when we try to let Things act on us? Naive aesthetics meet a surreal feminist machinery in queer-ing the everyday and turning function on its head.

Performance at Centro del Carmen de Cultura Contemporánea, Valencia, Spain. Construction of found object sculptures (concrete bricks, a tube feather tail, the skeleton of a mattress, a listening pipe, wood stick limbs, whistling tubes, a candle burning…) and collaborative performance.

AGÜITA (2023)

AGÜITA is a transdisciplinary research project, performance and installation taking place in the Ob Skena residency at Centro Huarte. Exploring material and sensorial qualities of the site (Navarra, Spain), a collection of found objects were improvised in relation to the body, while exploring the qualities of water as an element. Processes of rust, erosion, freezing, and evaporation were contemplated in material bodies and then explored somatically. The research process, carried out during the six-week residency period, involved somatic and divination practices, material processes, field recordings, and a series of workshops with the local community, all of which resulted in an installation of material assemblages activated in a performance.

ÁNIMA (2019-2020)

ÁNIMA explores material animacy and abject femininities using dance, sculpture, and ritual. Activated by sensorial movement, the Other Body sculptures collaborate as tactile and emotive relationships develop between bodies, navigating the porousness between desire and repulsion, tenderness and violence. The performance activates such questions as: How to inhabit the negated? How to act from the viscera?

Performance with Other Body sculptures. Performed at Sporting Club Russafa and Teatre el Musical (Valencia, Spain), within Cabanyal Íntim Festival. Residency at Sala Sabil (Asturias, Spain).

Matteria

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