The Caldeirão Highlanders, exercises in fictional anthropology is focused in desertification and dehumanization of the Sierra de lo Caldeirão in he Algarve (Portugal). Mantero uses her own images, together with the ones filmed by the anthropologist Michel Giacometti on the song of labour, to bring to life the traditions of the oral culture of the people who lived in the rural areas of Portugal, traditions also seen in other cultures and continents. Through this portrait, Mantero analyses the wisdom of rural life that has been lost over the years.
«In this work, created for the Encontros do DeVIR festival, I address myself to people who possess a lost knowledge, a knowledge about the link between the body and the spirit, between everyday life and art. A knowledge that we can and must rescue, for our own good. My final dance is my tribute to this knowledge».
Vera Mantero
Activity in collaboration with the TopARTE program of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
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Vera Mantero studied classical dance, and was a dancer at the Gulbenkian Ballet between 1984 and 1989. She began her career as a creator in 1987, and was soon considered one of the central names of the Nova Dança Portuguesa, showing her work all over Europe, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Canada, the United States, Korea and Singapore.
Since 2000 she has also dedicated herself to voice work, singing repertoire by various authors and co-creating experimental music projects.
In 2002 she was given the Almada Prize (IPAE/Portuguese Ministry of Culture) and in 2009 she received the Gulbenkian Arte Award for her career as a creator and performer.
«For me, dance is not a fact. I believe that the less I get it, the closer I will be to it. I use dance and stage work to understand what I need to understand. I no longer see any sense in a performer specialising in one discipline (a dancer or an actor or a singer or a musician) and now I see some sense in a performer specialized in the overall. I see life as a terribly complicated and rich phenomenon, and my work as a continuous struggle against the impoverishment of the spirit, both mine and others', a struggle that I consider essential now and always».
Vera Mantero
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