Plot

Through this looking glass is a piece by Joana Sá for prepared piano, toy piano, electronics, props and a mobile, with strong scenic and performance features. Inspired by the surreal and dreamlike world of Lewis Carroll and exploring the relationship between music and poetry, the piece is divided into two different parts: '13 mini(cre)atures for robert schumann' and 'freedom means little. what i desire still has no name'. While traveling 'through this looking glass', one encounters creatures made of sound making their way through different musical logic in a bizarre and hypnotizing world. Joana slides into, beneath, in between and outside the piano as one who searches for the hidden logic bowels and a forgotten childhood of this instrument that has become, because of its historical importance, of an almost untouchable 'severity'. After all both the piano and pianist can 'play'. The performance 'through this looking glass' was captured by film director and cinematographer Daniel Neves into a black and white movie with the same title. Daniel closely follows and transforms every musical gesture into unique pictures of sensitive aesthetics. Whether it is music that we see or images that we hear, we'll never know. There's no line that divides or designates territories: Joana and Daniel build something hardly definable yet overwhelming and original.