Peça do Coração: EXCALIBUR, directed by the choreographer and dancer Mariana Tengner Barros, projects a crossing disciplinarity in collaboration with the graphic artist Mark Angelo and the team of A Bela Associação. This project arises from the desire to value Nature, with particular focus on trees and their importance in the balance of ecosystems.
The creation process has its origins in the mapping of the oldest trees in the Lisbon area, where four areas were chosen around the identified trees: Alcântara, Lumiar, Loures, and Benfica. Much of the research was performed by symbolic actions, resulting from dialogue with the local community, free workshops, small performances, and video recordings. This phase of the project was called Foresta Invisível, an autonomous, temporary, and mobile performance space.
The material collected and developed in this phase make up the dramaturgy of Peça do Coração: EXCALIBUR. In its creation are also included strategies that allow producing content accessible to blind and deaf people. It is crucial for the team of this project that it can contribute to the eradication of prejudice and exclusion towards people with disabilities. In this context, Peça do Coração: EXCALIBUR intends to be a hybrid object, composed by several fragments of this experimentation, inviting the public to open their senses, in an attempt to give visibility to the invisible, sound to silence, and form to the unknown, in an immersive and interactive journey.
The project also includes the creation of a website to document, share, and make available streaming videos to map connections between trees, communities, and territories. This website will also make accessible the testimonials, photographs, and video records of the work established with the various communities. This set of collected data will be presented in the context of national deforestation.
