Roberta
Paixao Cortes, a choreographer and co-founder of Group
Acorde, remembers recently seeing a post online about a hurricane churning in
the Gulf, her body reacting before she even knew where it was headed.
“I
just stopped,” says Cortes. “I think I held my breath.”
Cortes
says we can all relate to the visceral changes a body experiences when feeling fear
or anxiety, like shortness of breath, a pounding heart, and sweaty or cold hands.
Groupe Acorde will explore the effects of mental trauma and the use of music
and movement to help alleviate these effects during Beat, an
evening of premiere dance works drawing inspiration from the heart and the
heartbeat.
Since founding Group Acorde with Lindsey
McGill in 2016, Cortes says they have understood the
importance of doing outreach and giving back to the community. Mental health is
an area she says they’ve always wanted to work in, and, though it took time, an
opportunity eventually presented itself through Cortes’s friendship with
Maurien Caron, a counselor and clinical director at The MendCenter, a mental
health facility in The Heights.
Following
workshops conducted at The MendCenter, Cortes says she
and McGill began having conversations around mental health – specifically, how mental
trauma from the natural disasters plaguing Houston was affecting our physical bodies.
“It feels like we were hit one month and then something else would
happen,” says Cortes. “It’s interesting to
see what happens with our mental health when we have to prepare for something.
It’s the preparation that comes with it, it’s the anxiety that comes with what
might happen, and it’s also the aftermath of it.”
Their
research into the body’s fear and anxiety response led to an exploration of the
role music and dance play in regulating a person’s heart rate, which resulted
in “Batimento Cardiaco,” one
of the three new works on the program that premieres at the MATCH on October 3
and 4.
“Batimento
Cardiaco,” Portuguese for heartbeat, is a work of contemporary choreography with
music by Thomas Helton and visual art by Andre Amaral.
Helton,
the company’s music director, brought in his musical collective Relative
Dissonance and created a score for string quartet, with pulsating sounds, out-of-sync
rhythms, and improvisational components.
Meanwhile,
Amaral, a Brazilian
visual artist
who works with recycled ink from printers and plexiglass,
has designed the set. “There are only four colors you
can work with, which is CMYK [cyan, magenta, yellow, and black], so he layers
them and, depending on how you see the layers, the image looks a little bit
different,” explains Cortes. “So, we decided to create a whole set around that.”
Cortes
says that in “Batimento
Cardiaco” and the second new work on the program, “Vessel” (excerpt), audiences will experience two very different
takes on how people see mental health and how the heart and the heartbeat have
been used as sources of inspiration.
“Vessel”
(excerpt) is a
composition for voice and upright bass by Natasha Manley, who Cortes says is well known within the dance community
as a stage manager but is also “a beautiful soprano and a composer as well.” Cortes notes that “Vessel” (excerpt)
marks not only Group Acorde’s first collaboration with Manley but also the
first time they’ve done a whole piece with voice.
“Her work is very different. It really goes back and forth into
emotions. Her work also has the idea of how do we soothe ourselves, how can we
use each other to navigate difficult times,” says Cortes. “Her voice and her
interpretation of the score is carrying a lot of emotion right now, and, as a
mover and an artist, it’s really cool to respond to.”
Cortes
says a yet-to-be-officially-named third, shorter piece with Cortes, McGill, and
Helton will tie the evening into “something that, hopefully, is a journey we bring people on with
us.”
“It’s
really hard sometimes with the world that we live in right now to soothe
ourselves, to calm ourselves down, to acknowledge that there’s some sort of
shift in our physical body based on how we feel and to acknowledge our feelings
and emotions and give them space to be,” says Cortes. “I invite people to come at
the end of a long week, take the time to drive to a theater, and make that
commitment for themselves. My invitation is that they do and with an open heart
– no pun intended – and an open mind…hopefully, we can connect with you in a
way that that is different from other ways you might have connected throughout
the week.”
Beat will be performed at 8 p.m.
on Thursday, October 3, and Friday, October 4, at the MATCH, 3400 Main. For
more information, visit groupacorde.org or call 713-521-4533.
$22-$32.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
