Historic serie 17 | Sem Mim

SEM MIM
[2011]
choreography: Rodrigo Pederneiras
music: Carlos Núñes and José Miguel Wisnik
       (on songs by Martín Codax)
set design and lighting: Paulo Pederneiras
costume design: Freusa Zechmeister

The ocean (in Vigo), that takes and brings back the beloved one, the friend, is also the one that gives life and movement to Sem Mim.

With a choreography by Rodrigo Pederneiras, scenography and lighting by Paulo Pederneiras and costumes by Freusa Zechmeister, the creation of the Brazilian dance group is rocked by the original soundtrack woven by the hands of the Viganese musician and composer Carlos Núñez and by the Brazilian José Miguel Wisnik,  from the only set of pieces of music from the Galician-Portuguese medieval profane songbook that got to us with their respective original sheet music: the famous cycle of the ocean in Vigo, by Martín Codax. The seven chants, dated from the XIIIth century, are the oldest testimony and the most appreciated survivals of one of the aspects of the troubadouresque tradition in the region at that time: the so called “friend chants”. There, the poet always speaks in the name of the woman; more specifically, young women that mourn the absence or celebrate the imminent return of the beloved-friend. Avid for the reunion, they confide sometimes with the ocean, sometimes with the mother, sometimes with friends. And to pacify or fustigate the desire, they bathe in the waves of the ocean. (In case of the Codax girls, in the waves of the ocean in Vigo.)

The lyric of the Viganese medieval troubadour inspires Rodrigo Pederneiras to rule his movement music sheet by the alternation between the calm and the fury , and by the seesaw that is typical of ocean waves, and, also, to (re)produce, on the stage, the separation between feminine and masculine, where one always claims the absence of the other.