© Thais Mallon

Boca Seca (Dry Mouth) starts from dehumanization as a generating principle of presence. Directed by Dagô R. and created in collaboration with performer Déborah Alessandra, the solo is constructed as a duet between the body and a large sheet of kraft paper—an unpredictable partner that becomes anatomical expansion, but also sculpture, architecture, landscape and soundscape. On the reverse side of "mouth-watering," dryness takes hold: absence, emptiness, suspension of appetite. Between the living and the non-living, the intentional and the accidental, breathing remains as a minimal gesture of insistence.

Through cycles of formation and deformation , the performer + paper duo experiments with contours that emerge and dissolve. Folding, tearing, covering, sustaining: matter and body blur their boundaries, producing transitory forms that never stabilize. Taking shape in the world —existentially, politically, materially, and kinetically—becomes a choreographic speculation here. What kind of presence is possible when contours are fragile, blurred, always in negotiation?

At the heart of the work lies otherness. Boca Seca challenges the gaze that erases difference and investigates whether it is proper to the body to maintain its open contours—even if only some are forced to apologize for their “insufficiency.” Between erosion and persistence, matter and breath, the piece proposes a sensory journey through dryness: daring to appear before the Other with unstable forms, affirming vulnerability not as a lack, but as a field of transformation.

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