PLANS OF GRAVITY AND LIGHT. TOURING PROJECT. Dance Show

This initiative stems from research carried out over a two-month period at the CGAC as part of the dance, architecture and public space workshop Body, City, Presence, run by Paula Quintas.

The programme explores the phenomenological relationships between the human body, light and the architecture of Álvaro Siza Vieira. With the vast, triple-height space of the hall serving as its sole setting, the piece is conceived as an exploration of spatial perception.

We start from the premise that our experience of architecture extends beyond the visual to a physical and sensory relationship with the body. Movement, stillness and the positions we adopt become tools for understanding the scale, proportions and depth of a space. In this context, the hall is conceived as a perceptual environment in which verticality and architectural spaciousness create a dialogue between human scale and the monumentality of the building.

Light acts as an immaterial substance capable of transforming our perception of volumes, revealing textures and establishing shifting relationships between surfaces. Its presence introduces a temporal dimension that allows architecture to be experienced as a dynamic reality, shaped by environmental changes and the presence of the observer.

The project adopts a restrained approach to Siza’s architectural language, taking care not to compete with its formal configuration. Through minimal intervention and a conscious choice of materials, the aim is to bring out the space’s qualities without altering its essence.

The work lies at the intersection of sculpture, installation and architectural research, with the intervention conceived as a device for directing our attention, inviting us to rediscover the space through embodied and sensory experience.

PAULA QUINTAS (Ourense, 1983) is a dancer, circus artist, choreographer, teacher and cultural manager. She holds a Master's degree in Performing Arts from the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos and she explores the limits and intersections of the body arts in the framework of the PhD Programme in Creation and Research in Contemporary Art at the Universidad de Vigo.