MAKING SPACE
A step that creates space

Immerse yourself in the performative theatrical events of the body in the city. Making Space is a simple ritual, an action that invites you to walk backwards, to gain space and discover the urban environment in a different way. It is aimed at anyone who is unorthodox or simply curious.
To take part, all you have to do is follow one rule: walk backwards silently along a route carefully selected by the artist Rita Vilhena. The choreographer invites everyone to break away from the daily routine, to let haptic exploration take over visual navigation, and to imagine a different world in a different body. Making Space is a performative event in which the subjects focus on a flow: walking backwards and simultaneously watching others walk backwards. By walking absurdly, the participants emerge as symbolic operators of a particular reflexive identity in public space.

Can the act of walking backwards give a new shape to the urban landscape? What can a group of individuals create when they walk backwards together?
The challenge is to break the order, both for those who witness an unexpected situation and for those who expose themselves. This is the basic principle for the emergence of a scenic action, according to Marcelo de Sousa Brito, for whom scenic action would thus be any expression that unites action and speech by one or more individuals, with the aim of provoking debate on the cultural and social development of the city or as a way of stimulating the occupation of public spaces in an artistic way. 

How can the individual experience change the collective experience? And how can common experience change individual experience?
When we're in a group where everyone is walking backwards, it's as if we're all blind and don't know where we're going. This proposal appeals to the sensation of the body, the space it occupies and the space it releases. The choreographic structure is made up of a defined time and space. Participants walk for 50 minutes and then relax for 10 minutes in one position, sitting or standing, to integrate the sensation of the previous period. The action has already been presented in various international contexts with very eclectic groups of between 20 and 60 participants.