“bear me” explores the concept of relationships: the relationship between Me and You, between the Performer and the Audience, between Men and Society. A metaphorical journey of vulnerability and exposure is created on different levels, from which a distorted and incomplete body emerges. Also created is the necessary space which enables the audience to enter the private and secluded place of the performer where parallels are drawn between intimate and interpersonal relationships in an ambiguous way, allowing the action to unfold in double meanings. The space “between” intensifies the feeling of limbo that exists between the two characters, as well as the loneliness and intimacy that belongs to the third hybrid body.

“(…) Then, there are new names worth to be discovered: Cristina Planas Leitão and Mara Andrade, for example. In different ways, with different approaches in terms of creation, each one created a kind of a character. In her “bear me” Cristina composed a double personality character through a delicious ferocity of questioning the relation with the audience – which both do. She is at the same time tender and defiant. In a confrontational position she creates as much mistrust and tension as she breaks that tension when she wants, conquers trust, and leaves the audience rendered to an innocent fragility that briefly recalls the book and movie “Where the Wild Things Are” (2009). 

In all shows mentioned here, the title and the nature of this film is the essence of this dance: spaces inhabited by wild things – bodies, temperaments, behaviours, histories – but so disarming, appealing and touching at the same time. They may seem strange but they make us surrender ourselves so easily to their poetry, made from a persistent naming of each gesture shared. Even when mute, they create meaning in the mind of the beholder. It is not just a coincidence that “bear me” starts with Cristina dressed in a simple t-shirt, facing the public at the front of the stage, and speaking to the audience through a microphone, saying: “This is about you and me.” She ends with the same sentence, “this is about you and me,” followed by another one: “I think we need a break.””  – by Claudia Galhós in festivalbytes.eu

bear me was developed with the support to the creation/residency by Lugar Instável, Porto (PT) within the frame of Associated Artist of Companhia Instável and in collaboration with BCN – ballet contemporâneo do norte in the frame of Research Project 2014 – Conquering the studio: a time for research with Mala Kline (SI/ BE). The internationalization of the piece in 2017 to New York City is funded by Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Portugal. / Apoio à Internacionalização 2017 pela Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian

© André Mendes