Gestures as Portals is a research and ongoing performance that expands the questions of the project While Taking Shape by choreographer and dancer Amparo González Sola.
The month-long performance takes place during the dismantling of the exhibition Vultures & Fireflies by Mexican artist Alejandro Galván. Visitors encounter the performers in a house where remnants of the exhibition remain visible, alongside traces of its deconstruction and empty spaces.
Amparo González Sola resumes the questions and choreographic methods explored in While Taking Shape,* extending them into a durational, site-responsive format. For Marres, she develops a continuous performance that unfolds over four weeks, inviting visitors to spend as much time as they wish in the space. The work evolves daily, allowing the choreographic materials—and the space itself—to transform gradually through repetition, presence, and interaction.
Gestures are central to González Sola’s practice. She approaches them as portals to memory and connectors between bodies, shaped by context, inherited through generations, and always relational. During her time at Marres, she works with the gestures found in the rooms: those of the performers, the visitors, the workers, and traces from the former exhibition Vultures & Fireflies. These gestures are echoed, held, stretched in the space, repeated, reversed, reshaped: building a vocabulary of movement that slowly accumulates meaning.
The performance emerges from a growing sense of detachment in a world where terrible events are constantly projected onto our retinas through the media—an endless stream of images moving at high speed and stripped of context, seemingly freezing our ability to feel. How close does something need to happen before we feel a connection or a sense of responsibility? By focusing on small gestures, González Sola invites us to reconsider the dynamics of gaze, distance, and proximity as we reflect on what it means to bear witness.
*While Taking Shape is a dance performance created by Amparo González Sola, which premiered in 2025 at the SPRING Performing Arts Festival.
Performance
Dance and movement by performers Amparo González Sola and Leandro de Souza, accompanied by video, light, and sound.
There is no fixed program: each day unfolds differently. Every day, González Sola creates a score indicating what happens in a room, at what time, and for how long. This information is shared daily at the entrance and on postcards. Floor managers and volunteers from Marres will explain the day’s program and guide you through the different spaces.
In each space, she experiments with different forms of invitation—sometimes asking visitors to sit alone and observe, to listen to a sound recording and its echoes with closed eyes, or to watch projected images from a distance. At other times, she proposes simple actions, such as walking through the space at a certain pace. These invitations change from day to day and reflect the ongoing research process.
The performance exhibition is open to everyone free of charge on Friday evenings from 5:00 to 8:00 PM, and workshops are offered as well.
Workshops
On Friday evenings and at selected moments during the week, González Sola invites you to take part in participatory workshops. Here she shares elements of her choreographic research and encourages participants to experiment together with movement scores and instructions.
Artist Talks
In a series of conversations, González Sola speaks about her work and process, reflecting on how gestures, movement, and space generate meaning and connection.
Location
Marres, House for Contemporary Culture
Capucijnenstraat 98, Maastricht
More information is available on the Marres website.
Image: Rob van Hoorn
Location:
Marres, House for Contemporary Culture
Capucijnenstraat 98, Maastricht
