To take a stock of whatever, it requires a capacity for distance and an enormous external gaze. As if we were trying to be the “body that sees” and the “body that acts.” It is a face in the mirror, naked and raw. I never knew how to do it ... I am constantly thinking with the organs and feeling with the logic, and the memories are flooded with emotions and distortions that make doubt if they even happened. I mainly never knew how to do it because of an inability to assume without repentance whatever I find on the way. I would rather leave it behind, tidy and untouchable. Over the years, I realized this race ahead is always accelerating and the more we avoid looking back, the faster we want to go forward. The escape instinct will have a lot to say about it and in my case, I was simply accepting the subliminal conducts which guided my behaviors and by accepting them I was being the good boy, very competent, setting reasonable goals. And what was that bringing me? To myself, to my experience of being alive and building myself while I am existing?

I am Marco, a Portuguese choreographer (and many other things) and I am currently in a rehearsal studio in IQlhavo, Portugal. I am researching material for a new piece for the National Ballet Company. It is my first production with a large institution, and I confess you I wondered if it would be the right time to accept the invitation. I accepted and I have been dedicating to it intermittently since August 2019. If I try to find a logical reason for "where I am" now, I would say that I came here by chance. The path has been so flowery and slippery, and I could almost say that I didn't choose it, it happened to me. Sometimes it is even so, things happen to us. And we need to know how to relativize the responsibility we put on ourselves and that it is placed on us. In this text, more than drawing a line of success points, I will make a more intimate and honest journey around what I deal and what I received, trying to realize the benefit of these moments.

My parents haven’t an artistic background, or other academic background. My parents were ambitious young people and they still together today. They had two children and worked very, very hard, changing their careers, having multiple jobs each other, growing together towards a “better life”. I tell you these, because they were foundations extremely strong and to some extent imposing models. I believe I was clearly led to replicate models it didn't suit me that well.

At 5 years old he was a happy child, one of those who disguises himself at parties, sings and dances for everyone. I studied music and in general have always been more curious about girls 'things than boys' things, whatever that may be. But the school manages to be a cruel and "correcting" place. At 10 years of age I had to change schools, victim of bullying (I know it's called that now), and there was an episode that left a deep impression on me. It was spring and there was a talent contest at the school. I decided that I wanted to participate with a group of my class, and we built a choreography to present. On the day of the exhibition, during rehearsals, an adult from the school asked me why I was doing that, in the group they were just girls and I should be doing something else. At home, when I told my mother in tears and in conflict with myself, my mother replies: “If it makes you so sad to hear it, maybe you shouldn't even participate!”. That day I realized the strongest person in the world, who was my mother, was also afraid of what this could bring me!

Perhaps if this episode had not happened, it would be possible to trace a linear path from then to now. But it was not the case. I became a less naive child and the next decade was dedicated to competitive swimming. At 16, a burnout associated with an eating disorder ended my swimming career. The tipping point was painful, and it was lived silently and individually. Nobody followed or knew anything until I was 27 years old. But I had to jump out of that complex gear.

Dancing emerged at that time as a substitute for physical exercise and as I lived during MTV golden times, it was through urban dances (discussible term but in a lack of better one) that it all started. (HipHop House dance, etc). Although I only later understood, the daily practice I did in swimming, the "conversation" and negotiation I was constantly establishing with my body, the intensity of focus, the meditative state that I found myself while swimming, the hours and hours of submersion that helped me to map a type of motricity. All of this was central to the transition to become the dancer I am today. Obviously, this was not clear at the time and it was an escape from trauma. Only later I was able to appease myself and integrate it. The sanctuary / tool that is our body led me to learn how to listen it better and to build the right ramps. I rediscover through the body vehicles of relationship with others and with me. I stopped looking in a solitary and competitive activity and I started looking for ways to meet with the others and with the world. Albert Einstein said that "dancers are the athletes of God" and removing deep religious connections (which I don't really have) I underline the importance of knowing how to care, discover and get involved every day with this organic, sensitive, energetic material which is our body. Search for the best routines, the continuous practices, the methodologies that makes you feel in some balance.

My academic career was in Health Sciences. I studied Dentistry for 2 years and gave up because I was again a victim of bullying in academic practice. I went to study Physiotherapy and after 4 years I left the course 2 months before finishing my degree to participate in a television program, SYTYCD Portugal. Until then, I did a lot of training in a self-taught way in Portugal and abroad, I was teaching classes to adults and children, giving workshops. I usually traveled with a group of friends on every free time I had to take classes and intensives and I was interested in any kind of classes and techniques possible. It was an awkward path where I often felt ridiculous and clumsy, but curiosity, amazement and ability to laugh at myself ended up part of this practice. The fact of not having an academic eye on dance, gave me the freedom to do and make mistakes, without stigma, without judging what is a superior dance or an inferior dance, a promiscuous dance or a dance of cultures, of ghettos, of high technics or improvisation, of catharsis or therapeutical. The focus was on knowing more, accumulating knowledge, seeing, doing, feeling and experimenting. I was thinking about what the dance meant nowadays and meant to me. Why did we dance? What is motivating us and how it is translate in movement?

When I won SYTYCD Portugal (TV program) at the age of 25, I felt myself entering a competitive and anxious world again, either through the battling in urban dances, or through this television program where everyone has an opinion and were feeling an ascendant above me because they voted. It was time to step aside and understand the banalized and less erudite journey and integrate it into a path that was already atypical and very patchwork. It was then that contemporary art became a possible answer. I needed to get out of a television and commercial sphere and learn how I could fit into a contemporary dance movement. I started working with emerging choreographers, in Portugal and it was a moment of freedom and redefinition phase to myself. Knowing better what projects I could fit into and what my skills were, while keeping myself open to facing each artistic process as a learning process and thus maturing a more serene and less conquering performance side.

On the way there were auditions for Jasmin Vardimon, Wim Vanderkeybus, Gabriella Maiorino, Olivier Dubois, all of them "open auditions" because the auditions curriculum selective I ended up never being called as Carte Blanche, Batsheva, Cedar Lake, etc. My calendar was often with holes and it was due to these empty times that the first creations as a choreographer arose. At the beginning non-funding productions and shortly diffusion after the premiere. Ayway, I believed and was passioned about the relevance of dances emerging in urban contexts and I had a desire to see dance works being build and performed in Theatre and performing contemporary art context. As if what I wanted to see was not available. This gap was where I placed myself. I Become more aware of my outlines, what discourse I could have and who my peers- which is very enriching for any artist.

As choreographer and dance studious there were something essential and basic for me. The people I am working and meeting in processes, are part of a generating a safe place. The empathy and admiration between us must be real and the support and curiosity, in addition to being genuine, must be empowering for each one of us. For this reason, from the beginning I tried to develop proximity nucleus through the common artistic purpose. More than looking for elements that were technically brilliant or effective, It was important to feel we were inserted in a community built with people with similar interests and in a similar momentum.

I never joined a full-time company and always worked as a freelancer. I founded an association in 2013 to legally frame my activity and finally I am able nowadays to use it as a platform to support and integrate other artists.

The HU(R)MANO, BROTHER and BISONTE projects from 2013, 2016 and 2019 respectively, reflect this family that has been built. In all of them there is trust, love and sharing - such a safe place. In these 3 projects it became clear that the platforms of young creators existents in Europe (Aerowaves, (re)connaissance, etc), they brought visibility and leveraged the diffusion and circulation of these works. Even if there were many negative or absentanswers in applications and lost nights making dossier's that I didn't know how to organize, etc. However, I am proud of the resilience and perhaps the boldness of looking for people who could help me, writing emails to institutions to support me. To use my place as an emerging young artist, loaded with television stereotypes and amateurism to allow me to be shameless, to annoy and to place myself genuinely in an art circuit I admired. It was important to build an artistic identity that could define me. To assume to myself I didn't need to replicate models, that I could build on the experiences and “defects” which defined me. I am learning how to listen to myself, to accept vulnerability as a potential, to convert shame into pride and to be honest with myself.

Sometimes the temporal arcs are long, they haven't logical nuances, but there is no better studio rehearsal and mirror then the experience of being alive and actually feeling the world going through us.