Is that part of the piece?

First afternoon into Spring Forward Festival, 15th edition: me and my mentor at Springback Academy are wondering about a drone navigating a few metres above our heads in Mizu by Company Furinkaï & Théâtre de l’Entrouvert. As a weather precaution, the show had been placed right at the beginning of the festival, inviting the audience to stretch their legs across Guimarães’ historical centre to reach the City Park.

That same question, I found, guided my experience of these four days. What am I part of? 

• A 30-year celebration of the Aerowaves network
• Guimarães, the cradle of Portugal, with its amazing green landscapes
• Spring Forward, Aerowaves’ platform for dance discovery in Europe, featuring 20 performances selected by jury from among 700 videos of a new generation of international dancers. 
• And of course, an academy in dance criticism powered by a set of exciting writers!

That state of affairs made me feel awed the whole time. Who do I think I am, really? Who do they think I am? Is this dangerous? Should I behave cautiously? Should I behave boldly? When wearing the writer’s hat, do I network differently? How should I communicate? In which language? Neutral English? RP British English? English with a Portuguese accent? Portuguese with English action verbs? Uff!

Guess it’s better if you climb aboard the carousel and watch 4 days spin fast in a single minute: 10 seconds of live performances, 10 seconds of wonderful vegetarian food peppered with empathy and exciting conversations, 10 seconds of committed analytical mentoring work, 10 seconds of focused writing in hotel rooms or working room desks, 10 seconds of gathering moments to make sure we are all feeling safe and enjoying ourselves, 10 seconds of meeting new and old friends (hug them, behave awkwardly, compensate for failed promises, make new ones). 

Now zoom in. I want to tell you about what I really learned. To see dance on stage as oil paintings in motion, canvas with perspective, with subjects moving left, right, backwards, frontwards, diagonally, upside, downside, quicker, slower, precise or free-flowing. To describe facts, extract intersubjective meaning from them while keeping a conversation with myself and with the reader. And unbelievably important: always carry more than one pen to take notes, and never ever allow your phone, in a theatre, to replace a physical notebook. I also learned that, in getting the job done in dance writing, there’s no such a thing as ‘I’m a more experienced writer, hence I’m better at translating what I see into the page’. On the contrary, what I have learned both from my fellow colleagues’ curiosity and Springback mentors’ intelligence and sense of craft is that, like painters, dance critics have a voice of their own, a style of writing and preferred formats. For instance, initially I was convinced the 150-word review format wasn’t for me. I’m bad at small talk, so how can I possibly juggle ‘small writing’? Truth is, through practice, I saw myself enjoying it a lot, happy I was flogging review after review during the festival! On the other hand, and impossible to predict when I read about the feature article assignment, I now feel totally inept at writing a significant and appealing piece. 

I’m not giving up yet, though. Maybe, we will take a deep breath and dive in. There you are. You’re now inside 18th-century Vila Flor Palace, the festival heart, where the cultural centre is established. A bit further down the main street, refurbished in Art Deco style, Teatro Jordão and Visual, Performance Art and Music School with its large space where all the festival meals are served. Further north in the city CIAJG Square, where birds dream of flying*. Across these sites you see the Spring Forward community – artists, producers, directors, programmers, curators, hospitality teams, writers, podcasters, agents – walking around with their badges, flirting, commenting on a show, discussing movement, atmospheres, dramaturgy. 

You can kick your legs up to the surface.

Now zoom out, towards my birthday. It happened a couple days after the festival ended. I opened the national newspaper app, slid through the cultural section: a proper feature article written by a credited cultural journalist (who also writes about dance) accompanied by a photo of the Guimarães City Park (Mizu’s ice puppet just about to melt) – and look, there I am, me and my mentor contemplating the lake, quietly watching the piece. What an amazing image I thought to myself… Must be a drone…

* Do birds dream of flying, by Fabla Collective/Inan Sven Du Swami & Mojca Špik, part of Spring Forward programme was presented at CIAJG Square.