The truly brave are soft of heart and eyes,
and feel for what their duty bids them do.

The truly brave,
When they behold the brave oppressed with odds,
Are touched with a desire to shield and save:--
A mixture of wild beasts and demi-gods
Are they--now furious as the sweeping wave,
Now moved with pity; even as sometimes nods
The rugged tree unto the summer wind,
Compassion breathes along the savage mind.

-Lord Byron (Don Juan)

ruinedmap was founded by Abel Coelho in 2006 as a vehicle for his stage works: using the medium of the human body, stage elements, and sound - our performances are ultimately visceral and affecting.

We have performed in several cities, most notably Honolulu, Tokyo, New York City, Tasmania, and Shanghai.

Style
Abel Coelho has been creating his own tradition of dance for several years – stage movements that owe very little to modern or contemporary performance styles. Rather, he is forging his own dance language, one that expresses his own concerns and techniques as an artist. 

His dance training has been entirely in the areas of Asian traditional dance and butoh, but his work is most definitely not traditional dance.  Instead, he uses his experiences to create completely new stage movements and techniques: not imitative of any Asian form, but not Western Contemporary dance either.  Neither fish nor fowl is his work – yet it lives within its own tradition.

It is the tendency for present-day dance works to be thought of as existing within the tradition of Western dance: Modern Dance, Tanztheatre, or other Western forms of movement art.  In other words, that the dance world is divided into "traditional dance" and "Western dance," and contemporary choreographies almost only occur in the latter category.  To divide art dance into only a few categories is at best limiting, and at worst ethnocentricist.

Abel's work challenges these borders between dance styles.

Artist Statement
My art uses organic materials such as the human body, relying on somatic empathy to express abstract truths.  The viewers sympathize with and respond to what they see because, as humans, we all possess bodies and are capable of limbic empathy.  By using the human body, I hope to work with these very human responses to create “art” that truly speaks to the human being by awakening viewers’ somatic responses. 

The mouth is important for everyday use.  We use the mouth.  Without the mouth, we might perhaps revert to more basic and direct means of communication, just gossamer language with our limbic systems.  When an age comes where the mouth ceases to matter, then maybe we will have found a truer means of talking to each other.  A language that no longer uses symbols/words, but less concrete means of expressing our feelings.

When I realized that the human body is capable of so many actions, infinite ways of moving and posturing, I began to wonder how trapped we were in our learned movement patterns.  We are shackled to learned movements from childhood, and if we just try to break out of them, the  unexpected difficulty is incredible; surprising.  Interacting with the world in a less formalistic way involves far less and far more effort than one could suspect.

Our vocal equipment is capable of producing infinite sounds, yet most of us limit ourselves to our vocabularies and some society-acceptable noises.  The capacity to communicate incredible volumes beyond merely that which can be put into words lies mostly dormant in all of us.

Our bodies are still aliens.  We have many communication strategies that are unused, unknown.  That which you see onstage are some of the less recognized forms of movement - we are communicating with the most alien of creatures: each other.


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