Outrar

Choreography by Volmir Cordeiro based on a proposal by Lia Rodrigues.

Outrar is a 30-minute solo for open-air arenas.
Outrar is a choreographic response of clothes, colors, pain and joy to a letter-soundtrack received from Lia Rodrigues.

Coined by Fernando Pessoa, a writer of many masks and heteronyms, Outrar is a neologism meaning “to become other”. This word gives its title to an invitation from Lia Rodrigues, conceived as a letter addressed in 2021 to her dancers and to Volmir Cordeiro, at a time when the world was living in confinement and isolation. Volmir's spirited response is a solo that becomes a bridge between continents, a missive from Brazil to Brazilians in Europe.

In this piece, otherness unfolds beneath every layer of clothing, revealing a debauchery of faces, colors, pain and joy in the making. Outrar embodies the ambivalence of a powerful constrained desire, which only the imaginary can liberate. It expresses an insatiable impulse towards elsewhere, one that makes you feel festive and nostalgic. Dance becomes an array of gestures, an offering to metamorphosis. In encountering others and their vitality, against all odds, cultivate laughter, innocence, playfulness and joy. Let your clown, your mermaid, your inner character rise to the surface from troubled depths, to reinvest the common space and charge it with contagious emancipatory energy.

Outrar transcends borders and fixities to become a sensitive communication between bodies, sounds and gestures. It's a celebration of otherness, a vibrant call to make oneself other in order to better connect with humanity.