Amparo González Sola
Gestures as Portals

Gestures as Portals is a research and ongoing performance 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, her dance performance that premiered at SPRING Performing Arts Festival 2025. 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.

Performance

Dance and movement by performers Amparo Gonz.lez Sola and Leandro de Souza, accompanied by video, light, and sound.

There is no fixed program: each day unfolds differently. González Sola creates a daily score that indicates what happens in the rooms, at what time, for how long. These details will be shared with you at the entrace and on postcards. The Marres floor managers and volunteers are available to explain the program of the day and accompany you to the different rooms.

In every room she experiments with different forms of invitation—sometimes asking visitors to simply sit and observe, to listen with closed eyes to a sound recording and its echoes, or to watch projected images from a distance. At other times she proposes simple actions, like walking at a certain pace through the space. These invitations shift from day to day, reflecting the ongoing nature of her research.

Workshops

On Friday evenings and at selected times during the week, González Sola invites you to join her in participatory workshops. Here she shares elements of her choreographic research, encouraging participants to experiment with movement scores and instructions in an open and collective way.

There are workshops every Friday evening and at selected times during the week.

Artist talks

In a series of talks, González Sola discusses her work and process, reflecting on how gestures, movement, and space generate meaning and connection.

Amparo González Sola (Argentina, 1984) works where dance meets social listening. Her choreographic practice moves between performance and participatory experiments, shaped by feminist activism, migration, and an ongoing inquiry into reciprocity—how bodies, places, and histories respond to one another. She treats gestures as portals: held, slowed, and reshaped to reveal the memories they carry and the connections they invite. Recent works include While Taking Shape, The Conspiracy of Forms, and If Every Rock Is a Hole, presented at SPRING Performing Arts Festival, alongside the long-term project Exploring Reciprocity, which convenes communities across generations and disciplines. From 2025 to 2028 she is an associate artist at Dansateliers.

Concept and direction: Amparo González Sola
Performance and research: Leandro de Souza, Amparo González Sola
Sound: Nahuel Cano
Light: Vinny Jones
Dramaturgical advice: Bek Berger
Video: Jesus Serrano Huitron
Co-productie: Dansateliers

Gestures as Portals is part of While Taking Shape, a co-production of Dansateliers, SPRING Performing Arts Festival, Frascati Producties.

On Sunday, 5 October, Amparo González Sola, together with Leandro de Souza, will present a special closing performance during the Nederlandse Dansdagen.

Program (free entrance):

12.00h: Welcome with coffee & croissants
12.15 — 12.45h: Performance by Amparo González Sola and Leandro de Souza
13.00 — 14.00h: Gathering at the Vrijthof in Maastricht to express support for the Red Line protest in Amsterdam. Everyone who cannot travel to Amsterdam is warmly invited to join us. Together, we will show that solidarity is possible everywhere.
Marres will be closed between 12.50 — 14.00h.
14.30 — 17.00h: Continuation of the performance Gestures as Portals, in which dance, movement, and social engagement come together.

More information can be found on the website of Marres:

Website Marres

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Friday 3 October
12:00 - 20:00
- - Friday 3 October
  - 12:00 - 20:00
- - Saturday 4 October
  - 12:00 - 17:00
- - Sunday 5 October
  - 12:00 - 17:00
Other dates