português

Isadora.Orb, The Final Metaphor is a piece based on the masters thesis by Ricky Seabra in which he designed a Module for the Arts for the International Space Station called The ISADORA Module named after Isadora Duncan. In this theater/dance piece designer Ricky Seabra and choreographer Andrea Jabor explore the poetics of sending artists into space to create works of art.

They present, for example, a history of art in space showing, the first song written in space and a replica of the first sculpture set on the moon. The piece flows between dance, object theater, story-telling and documentary. At times it becomes a manifesto against science's monopoly over space exploration.

Through metaphors of ocean and diving, depths and heights, the two artists meet virtually on a screen in a sort of live filmmaking creating poetic dialogues of image and movement. The public is always aware of how the projected images are being built as they watch the artists involved in the creative process on stage. As Seabra and Jabor delve into the poetic potential of zero gravity and orbital movement they seek to unveil 'The Final Metaphor'.

Isadora.orb cleverly mixes dance and audiovisuals.
Fine humour, great precision and good use
of technical means and live movement.

- Carlos Gil Zamora, Revista Artez, Bilbao

Review by Kil Abreu, July 7, 2006
Festival Internacional de Teatro,
Sao Jose do Rio Preto

A song for Isadora

Firstly, the most stimulating thing about Isadora.Orb, The Final Metaphor is that it doesn't use new media just for the sake of the narcissitic exhibitionism of it's usage. It isn't exactly a theater piece, though it is built with theatricality. Nor is it necessarily performance, for it is too formal. It's an experiment which uses the clichés in vogue today but it spares itself from entering the hall of banality that pieces like this usually fall into: It is a multimedia stage event that samples elements from theater, dance, visual arts and electronic music.

This construction (in the literal sense of the word) that Andrea Jabor and Ricky Seabra bring from Rio is not concerned with erecting a fictional edifice full of details. It simply recounts an episode which, in and of itself, causes some bewilderment: an attempt by one guy to get approval for a project of a space module for artistic experimentation, The ISADORA Module, homage to the dancer who, in her childhood, claimed she was from the Moon.

What comes to fruition is a collage-narrative of the unapproved module. In this fantasy-plastique, both physical and audio, the duo from Rio creates some of the possibilities that occupying this impossible module would bring.

The charm of the piece lies in the use of explicitly technical artifices, such as projection of images, yet making them function in favor of poetic content. Even those who are bothered by the excessive use of technology in works of art cannot deny the stunning beauty, which they compose on a screen, of an experimental choreography in zero-gravity.

At this point, given the theme of the piece, what could have become a pointless exploration of a special effect becomes fun and pleasurable for the audience bringing them together under the same field of senses. And this is what theater does best: it's capacity to unite the human towards an esthetic objective but not necessarily with the same point of view, never loosing, however, a sense of the collective experience. A counterpoint to this is the beautiful and highly symbolic image in the performance: that of the monument to the fallen astronaut, that sleeps alone in a profound slumber during the long nights on the lunar surface.

Isadora.Orb, doesn't achieve, of course, it's well humored utopia of 'the final metaphor'. But it does indeed rescue us from the solitude of everyday drudgery and allows us to experience some really good moments of pleasure and poetry.

2008
SESC Palco Giratório Tour:
CEILANDIA - DF - Teatro Newton Rossi)
DOURADOS - MATO GROSSO DO SUL: Teatro Municipal
CAMPO GRANDE - MATO GROSSO DO SUL: SESC Horto
SAO PAULO SESC POMPEIA
FLORIANOPOLIS
RIO DE JANEIRO: SESC ESEM
SALVADOR: SESC Pelourinho
CRATO - MOSTRA CARIRI´ - CEARA´

FORTALEZA: ISADORA.ORB, OCTOBER 18 FESTIVAL BIENAL DE DANÇA

2007
Festival de Joinville, BRAZIL
6 City tour through southern Brazil with grant from FUNARTE/PETROBRAS
cities: Maringá, Campo Mourão, Curitiba, Porto Alegre, Caxias do Sul, Londrina
Festival Cena Contemporanea Brasilia, BRAZIL
SESC Ribeir‹o Preto - Galp‹o, BRAZIL
SESC Catanduva - Teatro Municipal, BRAZIL
SESC Santo AndrŽ, BRAZIL
Festival de Teatro de Recife, BRAZIL

2006
Teatro Nelson Rodrigues da Caixa Economica, Rio de Janeiro, BRAZIL
Festival de Sao Jose do Rio Preto, BRAZIL
Festival de Araraquara, BRAZIL

2005
Danza del III Milenio, Teatro Due, Parma, ITALY
Trouble Festival, Halles de Schaerbeek, Brussels, BELGIUM
RioCenaContemporanea, Rio de Janeiro, BRAZIL
Instituto Cultural Itau, Sao Paulo, BRAZIL
Premiere, KC nOna, Mechelen, BELGIUM

2004
Work in Progress 2002 KC Nona, Mechelen, BELGIUM

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Other projects by Ricky Seabra
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