Vocation/Vacation

studio practice | game: “goosebumps” + “going out” | photos by Gus Sainz

Vocation/Vacation is a dance piece based on a game structure in which artist and audience will engage in a brief conversation about the concept of work, pleasure, labor, vocation and vacation. These conversation will inform the way Luciana will perform her task: make a playful dance improvisation that will deconstruct and translate her own take of the words to her body movements.

Gathering her interests in game theory, dance improvisation, language/speech/literature in performance, D’Anunciação will prepare a conversation structure and make available options of dance intentions, states, costumes and songs in order to build a score to be achieved. The idea is to create a challenge for herself and test her own capability to the specific labour of fine-tuning to time and space in order to embody language and improvise with dance movements.

Trigged by the radical changes the current (and illegally elected) Brazilian government made on the labour laws, D’Anunciação reflects upon the value of work – and of course the value of her own chosen career as a artist. According the the new rules, workers need to complete 49 years of labour in order to have the right to retire, which means Luciana will only do it when she turns 83 years old! Those changes buzzed heated discussions in the country regarding work as a dignifying life purpose and the misjudgement around art making as a vagabond occupation, hence the interest in the words vocation – relates to occupation, work, divine call for a specific activity; while vacation relates to des-occupation, free time, suspension, leisure. Considering this topic is not an isolated phenomenon in the world currently, Luciana brings her own local political and cultural experience to a dialog with Canadian audience into a playful performance.