Missa do Orfanato (1989)

Overview

Created from the solemn Mass composed and governed on the occasion of the consecration of the Orphanage Church in Vienna in 1768 by a Mozart who had not yet counted his thirteen years, the 1989 Mass of the Orphanage is among the highest works of the Corpo Group. Already establishing the first codes of a choreographic writing that would reach its maturity three years later with 21, a watershed in the trajectory of the company, Rodrigo Pederneiras transforms his corps de ballet into a mass of devalued people who, contrary to what the ordinary Catholic Mass preaches, portrays rather the tragedy and misery of the human condition that the longing for glorification of the Divine. In a state of permanent contrition, the bodies of the dancers ritualize the helplessness, fear, affliction and loneliness inherent in the inapprehensibly earthly and transitory nature of the human species. In the incessant search for verticality, their convulsive gestures sound like cries of mercy.