Pour | Reflections: Bianca Guimarães de Manuel

Pour was choreographed by Daina Ashbee and interpreted by Paige Culley. During the 50 minutes of the piece, I drifted with the piece to many different places. Here are some of the questionings that led into interesting landscapes for me. I hope it will for you too.

Have you ever wondered why we get dressed everyday?

Are female-at-birth bodies always sexualized when exposed?

Is hyper sexualization in the eye’s who see it or in the body?

Could nudity be less about vulnerability and more about strength? If so, to whom?

What if this performing body was wearing clothes?

What if this performing body was not in the beauty standards?

What if this performing body was neither white-passing or white?

What if nudity was not a big thing in performance?

What if audience members were naked?

What are the power structures that perform with and in this body?

What if clothing did not exist?

Is this performer naked in the middle of the ice?

What if the performer’s lips were not with red lipstick?

Is the ice melting?

As a Costume Designer, I often engage with clothing in and as performance. Considering what is visible and invisible. Understanding that the items of clothing that compose a costume are the embodiment of a performance. The absence of clothing prevent us from reading location, mood, feeling, character, narrative, economical background, etc.

The costume design in Pour is the ‘absence’ of it.

The showing of the body.

The signs and symbols that Culley’s specific body has as affordances of itself. That at moments are in relationship to the materiality of the set, making her body wet and adding a different texture to the fabric-skin of her designs.  The costume is a big element of this piece’s dramaturgy.

Challenging audience members, some in a more violent way than others.

Bianca Guimarães de Manuel está no in-between Brazil and Canada. She is uma Latinx Scenographer and Performance designer interésted in como creation happens between people and things. Bianca is hápi of being part of SaB team, and for the conversations, the company is having in what and how can discomfort unfolds itself. Bianca believes que scenic elements podem interrogate the body, and people can interrograte spaçe, destabilizing power relationships of languange, meaning and status cuó. Bianca's approache tu costume and sete design emerges from a contradiçiõn of training and growing in a low-recursos country and the technical approach her MFA in Technical Theatre at UofC taught her. Bianca is happy to Swallow-a-Bicycle's Theatre Artistic Associate!