What is your name? Where are you now? What do you do?

I am Rita Marcalo but Instant Dissidence is the name I use for presenting artistic work. I am currently at The Guesthouse Project in Cork (Ireland), on an artist residency.

What was your pathway from study into the professional field of dance? 

It has been such a winding road, with a few pit stops.

Pit stop 1 - I fail to get accepted at the best training dance school in Portugal...

I apply for the Escola Superior de Dança in Lisbon. I get rejected for not knowing enough about contemporary dance: all I knew that wasn’t ballet by then was jazz dance, so when they asked me to do a contemporary dance solo I thought that was what I was supposed to do! But I get accepted into a dance course at the Technical University of Lisbon, and later apply and get accepted as an apprentice of Lisbon Dance Company. I then spend 3 years undertaking both courses at the same time, travelling across Lisbon for classes in each organisation. There was so much about contemporary dance I didn’t know, that I felt I had to do this to ‘catch up’ to  others... Then I am awarded an Erasmus Scholarship to undertake the final year of my dance degree in England.

Pit stop 2 - I want to be a dancer!

So I get my first few professional dancer jobs in England... And quickly realise that I am bored. I don’t want to do this...

 Pit stop 3 – I want to be an academic!

So I do a PhD and then get a position at a university... And then I realise that I don’t fit in: I can’t do the academic politics stuff that you need to do in that environment...

Pit stop 4 – I want to be a choreographer!

So I get on the treadmill: I begin to show work at unpaid showcases; then invite potential future funders; then I start getting funding; then I start touring; then I become associate artist of one of the major UK dance organisations... And then I have a breakdown.

Pit stop 5 – You’ll have to read the next question for this...

Tell us about the bit of your journey that’s not mentioned in your bio? What didn’t go quite as planned? How did it feel? How did you navigate it? Did something else come out of this encounter?

The breakdown. I couldn’t understand what was happening... I had achieved my goal by becoming that dance organisation’s associate artist, and yet nothing made sense... I was unhappy and had lost my way artistically.

So I took 6 months off, not just from work but also from life. I stayed home, read books, watched TV, slept, and kept searching for what was ‘wrong’.

Eventually a thought began to form in my mind: I should have been a social worker, not a choreographer. That was surprising! I continued to explore what was behind that thought, and realised that it was a deep need to do something that went beyond myself. To do something for others.

I made initial enquiries into starting a social work degree at Bradford University and then... A friend lent me a book on socially-engaged practice. For weeks on end I explored the field, going from book to book, and watching various socially-engaged works online.

And then I understood. I understood that since I was a child wanting to working dance I had been following a particular ‘the road to success’ that wasn’t mine. And I understood that in doing so I had left a different part of me behind. And I understood that I did not have to completely abandon my craft and retrain as a social worker: I had to leave a particular field of art and enter another.

The first work I made when I committed to socially-engaged practice was Dancing With Strangers: From Calais to England, a work which has defined Instant Dissidence ever since.

Sadly I felt that this new way of making work meant that I had to decline to continue being an associate artist that dance organisation: my path was now another. They understood and we’ve collaborated since on a few of Instant Dissidence’s socially-engaged projects. I will always be grateful to them for being part of the story of me finding who I am as an artist, and for begin so understanding of my choice.

My advice to my graduating self...

Rita, as a 23 year old you are scared you won’t ‘make it’ in the dance world. Because of this you are going into a bit of a spin, working over hours and applying for every opportunity. I want you to know that hard work will pay out. But I want you to also know something else. I want you to know that in your 40s you will drop a lot of the things that are important to you now. I want you to know that in your 40s all the learning that you are doing in relation to making art will begin to expand. It will begin to expand beyond your dance life and it will begin to spill into your entire life: your relationship to yourself, to your friends, to your family, to animals, to plants, to the planet, to the cosmos.

I want you to know that one day you and your work will feel so in tune with one another, that it won’t be a struggle anymore: work will just happen in the same easy way that your lungs breathe air...

That work won’t be what you think, but it will be what is meant to be.

My advice to a graduate now...

We all have one dance to dance out in life. And the whole point is to find that dance, and to dance it all the way out.

 One hope for the future of dance that could come out of 2020...

That it listens to the world...