A smile is the perfect Makeup for any social situation and at the latest with the yellow Smiley face, found on t-shirts, pills and in smartphone keyboards, it has established itself as a universal social currency. On the way to the perfect, sparkling self, it is simply put on – and works. To others, but also to ourselves. On our bodies, which no longer only have to please, but have to be pleasing. Functioning at any price. Inspired by the smiling masses in the paintings of Yue Minjun, the Smile of an optimization society is the state, A UNIVERSAL WEAKNESS enters. Two dancers, dancing through 40 minutes while being stuck in the same mask-like facial expression, try to please each other and let their arbitrary, frozen grin meet the involuntary smiles of the audience. They spread an absurd enthusiasm, which resembles the face of apparently permanently grinning happy dolphins. But how will these emotional moments of stress and pressure and presumably upcoming moments of pain manifest and express themselves in their faces – and bodies?
A UNIVERSAL WEAKNESS was created as collaborative project of Carla Jordão and the Almada Dance Company (Portugal).
Choreography: Carla Jordão
Dance: Bruno Duarte und Luís Malaquias
Music & Sound-Design: Timm Roller
Mentoring: Katharina Geyer
Light: Wolfgang Pütz
PR: Ellen Brombach
Coproduction: Almada Dance Company (Portugal)
Premiere: 5. Juli 2019 – Tanzfaktur, Cologne
Cologne Dance Award 2019
»Carla Jordão oszilliert in ihren Choreographien zwischen großem Gestus und kleinstem Zittern, zwischen verdichteter Konzentration und rascher Bewegungsfolge, zwischen dunkler Beklemmung und fröhlicher Leichtigkeit.«
Funded by the Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen and by the Kulturamt der Stadt Köln. Supported by tanzfaktur, Cologne
