It’s always a bit thrilling to go for the kill at the start, but anecdotes are intriguing so, what does dance mean to you?
For me, dance is all about expressing myself freely, it is about creating forms and deconstructing shapes, exploring identities and redefining norms. It’s political. It’s about culture, it is about freedom.
I grew up in Santa Maria da Feira, a city around 23 km from Porto, Portugal. But I must admit I was consumed in a heteronormative environment where I was exposed to a plethora of sports. 
When I was around 17-years-old, I started with street dance and then moved on to experiment with different dance forms—contemporary, house, club, afro, and pop. I performed for the first time when I was in my early twenties. I studied Physiotherapy for four years and I think it helps in some ways.
Once I started dancing, I didn’t stop, or rather I didn’t want to stop, that’s where I found myself. Through dance, I could express myself without any socially constructed boxes. I found a deep sense of freedom of expression, of existence.

What was your thought process behind creating the dance project Carcass?
The word “carcass” or carcaça (in Portuguese) refers to the skeleton or the remains of an animal that was once alive. It signifies the present while displaying a multilateral witness to the past. When you look at the carcass of an animal, you think of what it was like before when it was alive. 
How long did it move in time and space? What was the history? What were its features—the skin, the expressions and appearances?
This was my vision of creating this dance project. I wanted to mix different dance forms to create an amalgamation of urban street and contemporary tribal, modernism, and paganism coupled with live drums and club music. I wanted to showcase that dance does not have a fixed shape but still has a lot of forms. As a choreographer, I visualised the entire performance, and spent hours with my crew to understand the rhythm, the musical notes and streamline the flow. I look at the project from the outside as a whole piece and at the same time enter the choreography together with the dancers and rehearse it as one of them.

Can you describe the different elements of the dance performance?
Carcass is seen as a performance where a group of ten dancers move together as one object, or one skeleton. And then throughout the performance, every dancer moves individually to explore their own identities and exhibits a solo piece. At the same time, they hold the skeleton together as individuals, and move in unison so that the audience can visualise it as one object moving rather than ten unique dancers.
This juxtaposition of ten dancers exploring their culture, time, history, and role, as a collective identity through different styles of dance, is something that I wanted to play around with in this piece.
Focused on footwork, the performance includes steps resonating with folk dances of Portugal, European history, African dance forms, American street dance and modern-age contemporary art. So, the entire performance gives a folklore vibe along with techno club dance beats.
The performance also includes vocals where we shout, sing, and beat the floor. In one section, we lie on the stage and roll in a straight line while holding each other by the feet to create different forms, structures and shapes. It shows that we, as humans or social animals, can have more than one form, we are and can be more than one thing.

In the field of contemporary dance, what sets this piece apart?
What sets the dance piece apart is the “thirst” to investigate communities, past cultures, and collective identities, while touching on nudity, inclusivity and diversity. 
We bring together American pop culture coupled with Afro-descendant roots and the emergence of European identities, coercing the audience to question their own identities.
The piece is grounded in the art of collective identities, of understanding what we are as humans. The performance also includes two musicians Luís Pestana who provides tunes of electronic and digital music while, João Pais Filipe contributes a percussive quality exhilarating fast rhythms from the drum kit along with voices intersecting from the most traditional Portuguese wind instruments. This combination of traditional folk percussion and modern-day techno club beats takes the audience back and forth in time and space. It’s like a journey between the past and the present, between the realms of time, and ruins of history.

During the performance, the dancers make a social statement “Walls will fall”, what do you want to convey to the audience? Do you aim to use dance as a medium for social change or social expression?
I am from Portugal, a country that witnessed fascism and dictatorship, making it one of the longest-lived authoritarian regimes in Europe. So, for me, dance is “political”. 
There is a lot of history, pain, and collective memory from the past in our culture that has been ingrained in our roots with years of fascism. Through the performance, we aim to send a compelling social message of “Walls will fall” creating a theatrical experience for the audience to put an end to fascism and authoritarian political systems in their environments.
The idea of walls and borders is a social construct and I believe, walls will fall and turn into ruins. Borders are man-made and these borders are crossed and identities collide to create new experiences. The evoking performance tries to send a reminder call about the realities we live in, and our realities are intertwined with political systems and social identities. 

 
Since this was the last performance of Carcass, how was the experience of performing it to an audience in the Czech Republic?
I started conceptualising the project in 2020. We practised the choreography for 4-months continuously in Portugal, and from 2022, we performed at different dance festivals across Europe.
During our last performance in Prague, we could see the audience engulfed in our art as we moved to the beats of live percussion and electronic synchronisations. The audience gave us a standing ovation and that was a breath-taking moment. We received a lot of love and support from the audience. I think it was the best ending to this journey.

 

Marco da Silva Ferreira, 37, a professional dancer and choreographer from Portugal, has collaborated with major artists and his notable works include, for example, HU(R)MANO (2013) and BROTHER (2016), which explore the contemporary meaning of dance. When he was 25, he won the television competition "So You Think You Can Dance - Portugal" in 2010. As a choreographer, he premiered his first solo Nevoeiro 21 in Palcos Instáveis at Campo Alegre theatre in 2012.
He studied physiotherapy at the Instituto Piaget in Gaia (2010), and swam competitively from 1996. He left the field of sports in 2002 and began to devote himself to dancing. He first devoted himself to the field of urban dances and drew experience from dancers with African roots, between 2002 and 2010 he gradually devoted himself to various styles and began to approach contemporary dance, improvisation and choreography.