Sideways Rain

Sideways Rain
© Jean-Yves Genoud

«Sideways Rain»: Alias Cie. / Guilherme Botelho

Current Dance works Saison 2011-2013

Whereas Alias’s previous works have dealt with individuals, emotions and relationships battling their fate, “Sideways Rain” takes a global view and does something minimalist and radical with it. A seemingly endless stream of people move across the stage from left to right individually, in pairs and in groups. Reflecting evolution, they creep, crawl, wriggle, walk, run, race and stand still, sometimes being overtaken and sometimes going with the flow. They all strive towards a fate that seems to slip through their fingers. “Sideways Rain” is time marching on, life rushing by, a physical metaphor for life that, aided by its soundtrack, develops an intoxicating and hypnotic force. 

Bertram Müller, Member of the Jury:

“Encounters with the choreographer Guilherme Botelho and his work are an invitation to be fascinated by the scope of his imagination as it creates magical spaces and surreal worlds. With his company Alias, he has amassed an outstanding oeuvre over many years in which choreographic virtuosity reinvents itself time and again through an inexhaustible language of movement. In ‘Sideways Rain’, it is his rigorous reductivism that impresses. The dancers retain their individuality despite the conformity in the constant flow of bodies. ‘Sideways Rain’ is being – it is a true masterpiece of contemporary dance.”

Alias Cie. / Guilherme Botelho

Brazilian choreographer Guilherme Botelho was born in 1962 in São Paulo and danced with the Ballet du Grand Théatre de Genève for ten years before founding the Geneva-based company Alias in 1993. Since then, Alias has addressed the big themes of human existence. The idea of fate is a constant presence in its productions, which typically feature accidents, coincidences and things falling from the sky (water, paper, plaster…). Alias has enjoyed international success with its works, numbering around 20 to date, and has won several awards, including the Swiss Dance and Choreography Prize from the Corymbo Foundation in 2008.