Casio Tone is one of the first contemporary choreographic works (perhaps the first, as far as I know) about mental health. In this piece, mental illness emerges as a key theme, not really because of its authors’ intentions (as we will see in Part 1) but rather because of the meanings incidentally steaming from the show, and the discourses on which, consciously or not, the construction of its character also drew.

By “mental illness” I am not referring to the grandiose madness staged in theatrical oeuvres, the glorious insanity of love and death. Rather, I mean those little and unruly disorders, the mundane and tacit abnormalities of human behavior, so often concealed from people’s gaze – what psychiatrists from about two centuries ago called “neuroses” – many of which are nowadays grouped under the definition and diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Its symptoms are generally characterized by the uncontrollable repetition of certain ideas and actions, thereby potentially dysfunctional and anguishing to those experiencing it. Neither am I a psychiatrist, nor is Ms. Domicília a person in the medico-legal sense, but I would say that the first ten minutes of her performance would suffice for her to be recommended an OCD diagnostic exam. »

Pedro Pinto

Casio Tone: Domicília, before and through the looking glass was launched at the premiere of Casio Tone Reprise, on the occasion of the return, almost 30 years later, of Ms. Domicília to the stage. It is a bilingual, Portuguese/English edition, with texts written by Pedro Pinto.

In addition to a selection of images and photographs from the Casio Tone Archive, the book also includes two previously unpublished texts: Beware of my space!, an ArtRose scenario (for a possible show) imagined and written by Gil Mendo (1997), and Where is the scenery?, a movie script (for a film yet to be made) by Sérgio Pelágio (2002).

Author’s note: This book is not exactly an essay, it is not exactly fictional, it is not exactly a biography, it is not exactly about dance history, even less is it an academic book – and it is all of that at once.