Ismael Ivo

“I let movements within me live their own life,

 not knowing which hand or foot they come from.

 I place my body at their disposal, so that ideas and movements can act

 - then I am back at my own roots. It’s like being in trance. 

I give my body over to the idea, letting the idea work within me

 without trying to fix anything beforehand.

Everyday you go down to the river, but the river is never the same,

 so you always have to bring new life energy back.”

Born in São Paulo in Brazil, Ismael Ivo is an international star of modern dance and choreography who moves provocatively along the border between dance theatre and expressive dance and is concerned with the taboo on the body in the Western world. 

After receiving various honours in his hometown São Paulo and studying at the Alvin 

Ailey Dance Centre in New York, Ivo emigrated in 1985 to Europe, where has worked mainly in Berlin with colleagues like Johann Kresnik and George Tabori and for the

 House of World Cultures.

He defines existence in bodily terms. His existentialism makes him wary of the popular notion of conventions set by a social group as a whole, since he wants to get in touch with his public directly and physically: 

“Existence, as I see it, is fiction. Existence is Utopia. This involves a faith in life in the sense of transforming moments and relationships, opening new possibilities again and again… I believe in the body, not only in the soul. It’s my present home. And I can try to explore it more and more and to make it more sensitive. I am trying to find a new spatial order, a spatial order from body to body, from dancing to the public… What are the possibilities of communication? The body is an open house of possibilities. It’s so complex that I am always holding a dialogue with it without ever understanding it.”