Calixto Neto IL FAUX

Starting with the initial premise that a black body is by its very nature exposed to the danger of expropriation, or that of being stolen from itself, Calixto Neto tries to resist against exterior control and the risk of annihilation. In this exercise in ventriloquism, the Brazilian choreographer searches for the words with which to write dance.

Does a black body really belong to itself? By posing this question in an up-front way, in IL FAUX, Calixto Neto, highlights the systemic threat posed to racialized and minority bodies, thereby questioning the danger and violence that the contemporary world offers them, and the way in which this historical heritage is passed on. The history of the body that he constructs and which unfurls onstage is thus that of a process of “debodying”, as he calls it, and which propels him into a strange undertaking, that of self-fabrication. How can we respond to our own loss? Via resistance no doubt, perhaps through compensation, but definitely through dance. For Calixto Neto, only the affirmation of a vital life-force is sufficient enough to oppose the forces of negation of which the black body is the object and which attempt, from the outside, to take control of. As a moving target and puppet, the artist makes use of a ventriloquism mechanism which throws the regime of his own identification into disarray. Placing himself between spoliation and fictionalization, he looks into words as a means of expression and into language as means of consolation, with no guarantee of managing to do so.