Actor, bachelor degree by 2014 UCAM-.

Dancer of Esther Weitzman Dance Company since 2011.

Half Of The Time – Esther Weitzman Dance Company – (Season SESC Copacabana / Rio Center Coreográfico- / Winter Festival SESC 2012).

Workout 2009 season, Rede Globo, Brazil (2008-2009).

The Man Who Knew Javanese (Rio) (2009 Theatre IBAM).

Vandre Vitorino is contemporary dancer, contact improvisation researcher, pilates instructor and studious on the state of presence, Being and meditation. Graduated from the Technical School of Contemporary Dance Angel Vianna and Postgraduate in therapy through movement by Angel Vianna School , integrates currently , Cia Esther Weitzman as interpret and creator of the spectacle” The time of the medium .”

As a teacher and researcher, has participated since 2013 in the Ecoar group of the Movement Expansion project to disseminate Contact Improvisation. He Developed partnership with Soraya Jorge , researcher movement and introducer of Authentic Movement in Brazil , performing at the Festival of Contact Improvisation in Rio de Janeiro in 2009 and 2010 .

Between 2008 and 2011, as a dancer, he joined in Pulsar Dance Company and participated in the Collaboratory, artist residency program of the International Panorama Dance Festival leading to the scene several works presented at festivals in Brazil and Dance through the SESC Rio de Janeiro circuit. Allied to these investigations and studies , deepens into Buddhist and Hindu studies and the awakening of your true Self.

If affections move a choreographer, then they manifest themselves throughout his/her works. Choreographer and researcher Esther Weitzman’s signature joy turns the premiere of Jogo de Damas into a cause for celebration of the carioca dance. About to complete 14 years of a continuous work in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Esther Weitzman Companhia de Dança endorses the creation of this new piece, in which it brings special guest artists and its own dancers together. Each name, a singularity understood as beginning and end of the dancing act – an ethic compromise learned from the master Angel Vianna, whose legacy the choreographer has put into practice on a daily basis, working as a movement educator, for no less than 25 years.

In Jogo de Damas, such an aspect gets particularly significant in the sense that Weitzman invests in the dance experience as a strong element of the choreographic piece. Experience, as far as Jogo de Damas is concerned, relates to the present and the past of the dancers who compose the cast. 8 dancers, all female: among them are Claudia Horta, Giselda Fernandes, Mariana Souza, Mônnica Emílio, Patricia Riess , Renata Maciel, Roberta Repetto and Thamiris Carvalho, who attain the double meaning that the piece holds as its title

The choice for dancers who belong to different age groups is key to the dancing sense of the piece. The choreography is a scene once it turns into a game, to the point of extracting expressiveness from the movement experience. Such a trace indicates Weitzman’s poetics, which rests on a consistent and enduring research about the dialogue between dance and silence, responsible for the creation of intense physical landscapes in her works.

Jogo de Damas is a promise of playfulness and poetics to all audiences, no matter how familiar they are with the games of contemporary dance. It invests in the affective intensities generated by the very moment of the game, which work directly in the dancing corporeality to the point of transforming it continuously in the friction of experience. A possibility of tying the stage and the audience together in the context of the theater; both parts are able to share one single act of play.

Thereza Rocha
April 2013

Technical sheet

Concept/choreography: Esther Weitzman

Dancers/Creation: Cláudia Horta /Giselda Fernandes/ Mariana Souza/Patricia Riess / Mônnica Emilio / Renata Maciel /Roberta Repetto/ Thamiris Carvalho

Actual dancers: Gisele Alvim e Aline Valentim

Intern dancers:  Emeline Abib e Maria Noujaim 

Rehearser: Miriam Weitzman

Lighting design: José Geraldo Furtado

Graphic design:  Flavio Pereira

Costume design: Gerah Diaz e André Camacho

Photography: Renato Mangolin

Press Agency: Claudia Oliveira

Company Teachers: Esther Weitzman (Dança Contemporânea), Alexandre Bhering (Mat Pilates), Miriam Weitzman (Técnica Alexander)

Workshop teachers: Carolina Pedalino , Denise Stutz

Invited teachers: Toni Rodrigues , Paulo Marques e Guto Macedo

Text: Thereza Rocha

Translation: André Bern

Lighting board operation: Alexandre Corecha

Vídeomaker : Gustavo Gelmini

Production management: Marcelo Cabanas

Executive production: Camila Martins

Production: Bateia Cultura

Realization: Esther Weitzman Companhia de Dança

Adriana Pavlova  

It’s always very good to see a creator being able to reinvent herself. In 14 years of existence, the Esther Weitzman Dance Company has shown a great capacity to impress the public with pieces of work that every now and then propose new challenges to the group’s choreographic research. This has been done systematically, when, instead of using the Company’s dancers, Esther tries out new partnerships for specific projects, generating a diversity of artistic experiences that is capable of oxygenating and pointing towards new directions. “Jogo de Damas”, performance that can be seen from Friday to Sunday, at Espaço SESC, in Copacabana, until July 14th, is one of these extra projects coordinated by Esther.  And for the public’s delight, a very successful idea, in which the dance conquers the rare balance between lightness, a bit of humor and an interesting pinch of playfulness, focusing at the same time on the choreographic strength and creativity.

PRECISE MOVEMENT

If in 2006 Esther’s cast for “Territórios” was formed by 8 experienced male dancers (or, in other words, artists over their 30′s), now she inverts the proposal choosing a women-only cast of eight, each of them from different generations. The game that names the dance piece starts when each one of theses paths and artistic backgrounds are in evidence, emphasizing a fascinating lose-win situation when it comes to artistic competencies and physical age.

Esther was able to unite on stage at the same time, experienced artists that haven’t been performing in a long time, such as Giselda Fernandes (Os Dois Cia) and Renata Maciel (ex-Lia Rodrigues and João Saldanha), but also a new generation of artists such as the great Thamiris Carvalho, responsible for one of the few solos of the spectacle. It’s a group work in which, very appropriately, the interprets are called creator-dancers. Clearly, there is a little bit of every one of them in each scene.

The game that baptizes the performance reveals itself in the beginning when the artists are positioned such as pieces in a checkerboard and ready to collide, although without a fight. Such as in a game, they explore the precise movements of diagonals. Esther coordinates with mastery a dance that is at times fun at other times dramatic but always impregnated with contagious joy and disposition that shows the strong sense of a group made of individualities in which femininity and Brazilianness blend.

With almost no use of music and a whole lot of silence, the soundtrack, when used, serves to mark strong passages of the piece such as the race in “Road to nowhere”, of David Byrne. Complementing the other aspects, the eight women are dressed beautifully with costumes signed by Gerah Diaz and André Camacho. The lightening, also appropriate, is signed by José Geraldo Furtado.

“Jogo de Damas” is, without a doubt, a must-see.

30/06/2013 – Jornal o Globo

“The Time in Between”

Esther Weitzman Dance Company

Silvia Soter 

When it comes to dancing, but not only in dancing, time and space are inseparable. In “Tempo do Meio”, staged at Espaço SESC, the choreographer Esther Weitzman, this time behind the scene, manages this overlapping.

From the circularity of the paths that determines the come and go of gestures, to the beautiful mix of interpreters, some of them very young and others more experienced, time and space, also parameters of movement, reveal their intimacy in this piece. From the beginning, the temporality is in the contrast and in the complementarity of generations. In “Tempo do Meio” the choreographer recuperates old partnerships and inaugurates others. The participation of Fred Paredes and Alexandre Bhering, partners of Esther since their formal education, offers a special touch to the piece, along with the youthfulness of the other interprets and their precise and economic performances. Watching them confirms that time refines the gestures in a dance that is free from mannerisms and waste.

In this performance, Esther Weitzman visits her own piece. The ones that had the privilege to follow Esther’s work as an interpreter of her own creation find it especially interesting to see her art gaining form through other bodies. The passage of a company that was most of the time formed only by women to a group constituted by Alexandre Bhering, Frederico Paredes, Peter Mark, Vandré Vitorino e Mônica Emílio helps to give visibility to what underpins the choreographer’s dance. From the pulsating synchrony of “Lands” and “Landmarks” to diving into the aging process of “O que imagino sobre a morte”, elements that arose during more than ten years  of working as a company were structured. The absence of Esther as an interpreter emphasizes  her signature as a choreographer.

The “in between”, present in the title, is understood not  only as the distance between two points, but also as environment. The lighting of José Geraldo Furtado and the scenography signed by Leo Bungarten, combined with the soundtrack, are crucial for this environment to transform itself and to alter the bodies and other possible interpretations, which in some short spaces of time makes the scene dispense with dancers. The good integration of environment and choreography is another highlight of this delicate work.

 Maio de 2012

Reviewed by Silvia Soter (Jornal O Globo, Segundo Caderno, 17/05/2009)

“(…) Strongly connected with the music which is composed through the rhythm of the bodies, both in its synchronicity and collectivity, most of this piece is structured in solos and brief encounters among the dancers.

As a first impression, the presence of three mature dancers raises the question of the time changes in the very dancing body, which imposes new limits and qualities. The denseness in Paulo Marques’ presence as well as Toni Rodrigues and Esther Weitzman’s peacefulness on stage are the fruit of experience. Speed and agility make space for an economical dance mainly based on small gestures and expressions.

The choreographer’s duet with Toni Rodrigues is a beautiful moment in the piece. The repetition of a couple’s dance, to which variations are added at a time, gradually builds the feeling of transformation and highlights the gaps printed in the relationship by time.”

Reviewed by Silvia Soter (Jornal O Globo, Segundo Caderno, 17/05/2009)

Jornal do Brasil – 11/08/2006

Open Territories for Male Expression

Eight dancers. Eight Men. Eight different territories. That is the scene which is built within the new work of the choreographer Esther Weitzman, Territories, recently staged on Teatro Nelson Rodrigues and on Espaço Cultural Sérgio Porto and now, it is on Centro Coreográfico. A Dance, which is strictly male and at the same time absolutely contemporary, creates the opportunity to glaze upon the strength on how Esther’s movement vocabulary finds a safe stand point within those bodies.

The dancers, especially invited for the work, accepted the challenge of being together on stage, but never building up only one body, as a group, in Ballet Dance with what we are used to. Those are bodies with several histories, with muscle and kinetic qualities so unique that they offer themselves as maps of Dance always plural. The whole range of these physical possibilities were wisely thought by the choreographer, who manages different maturities (and, because of this, competences) through using the idea of tradition.

This can be seen at the very beginning, when “escravos de Jó”, a Brazilian children game, is brought into scene. The sense of responsibility to make the game succeed, from an individual contribution which heads towards the collective, draws the north of the choreography on the way to this tradition. The references to Jewish dances, raw material which has been being polished by Esther since Terras, her choreography from 1999, reaches the dimension of the male body, rooting itself more and more in this sense of tradition. A tradition of today, pulverized, diverse, globalized. A contemporary tradition.

And from these very especial moments arise, like the ones that offer the privilege to show such an experienced interpreter as Alexandre Franco dancing, a dancer and a choreographer who has got the whole thought of Dance rather well established, besides the young, and excellent, Felipe Padilha. Two places so fulfilled with singularities are, there, revealed. Or else, when we are able to see the maturity with which the dancers Marcellus Ferreira and Marcelo Lopes gives to the scene their parts of history, in such a generous way.

The territories unmasked through Esther Weitzman’s choreography are there at the same time in a raw and prompt status. The rhythmic movements, the silences and the group dances, elements which are the trade mark in Esther’s work, reached, now, a vigorous translation on the male bodies. And they do stir up the hope that these territories, without loosing their tradition and their history, can share, one day, the same space. It is that what is said by this Dance.

Roberto Pereira 

 JB Online – 4/6/2005

Poetic and Organic – Por minha parte encloses the public

The color of ocher which travels over the newest work of the choreographer from Rio, Esther Weitzman, Por minha parte, that had its first presentation on Thursday at Espaço SESC, seems to be the password to get inside the choreographic universe organised there. One of the strongest characteristic of Esther’s signature has always been the relation, almost organic, with the floor, poetically emphasizing the weight of her dancer bodies. Within this work of art, this soil, wholy ocher, is disclosed at the inspiration of the choreographer, the North part of Brazil, translated in the scenery, in the outfits and essencially in the movement itself.

In this way, the ambience, built inside the mezzanine of Espaço SESC, catchs the attention, mainly the rustic floor, made of wood, which, besides registering the dancers’ sweat, grimes them along the dance. As the disposition of the bleachers is a circle and very close to the spectators, the acquired spots there seem to mix, organically, the audience to the dance, also close to the delicacy of the whispers and the hugs of the interpreters. An intimacy and connivance are settled within the same field, amid the ones who are dancing and the ones who are watching. Also the outfits, signed by Gerah Diaz, allow the translation of the color of ocher and the soil in the textiles, also rustic, as cotton, but always exact in their elegance of colors and textures.

But, it is in the movement and its quality that Por minha parte is remarkable. There are continuances of the research Esther Weitzman has been dedicating herself, like its relation with the weight, with the body that is moveable, allowing the sound of this movement to be raw matter in order to be handled, like the pair silence/music, with their dramatic concerns. Thus, the soundtrack, played alive by the musical group CRAQUELÊ, at the same time offers evidence of this relation, it ocupies too much room, sometimes, within that ambience so intimate, especially because of its melodically eloquence. It even seems that, in the silence, Esther reachs moments of accuracy and righteousness inside her choreographic thought.

In the dance piece, the choreographer, for the first time, does not take part in it, which, for sure, gives to her work the most refined accomplishment, because of her chance to see it from outside, sculpturing the space in a way so delicate and vigorous at the same time. Hence, even with the maturity so diverse of her five dancers, Esther is engraving on them her vocabulary of movements, a result of years of research. Of course, she has to amalgamate them better, within their movements, for the whole of the interpreters becomes organic with the entirety of the dance piece. Therefore, nothing better than time: the body needs to learn with lull what is entwined there with poetry. Por minha parte, thus, is only a piece of this rich process.

Roberto Pereira

Bringing together both Clarice Lispector’s writings and dance’s vernacular could very well be Sonoridades’ main goal, something which is proficiently accomplished by the Esther Weitzman Cia de Dança. Notwithstanding, and most importantly, Ms. Weitzman goes beyond that. Whereas Clarice Lispector showed stamina through the use of delicate words, Esther Weitzman found the path to lightness through the weight of her writing in space. By searching in the body the nature of her own words, Esther Weitzman presents a valuable advancement in her choreographic vernacular, proof of a richer and more mature syntax, with her ever more recognizable signature imprinted in the bodies which accompany her in this creative movement.

Beatriz Cerbino - Dance Reviewer and Researcher