“Duploc barulin.” Try saying it out loud. This is the title of Tânia Carvalho’s latest venture into concert creation. It is written in small letters, creating an onomatopoeic percussive sound when pronounced aloud and raising the enigma of its meaning, consistent with the artist’s approach to art—be it dance, drawing, or music. A title that is a door that opens to the imagination that Tânia formulates with each new creation, whether in the dancer’s body, in the musical notes of a piano, in the drawings that her hand traces on paper, or in song. We know Tânia Carvalho’s work as always overflowing with imagination and the expressive possibilities of the body in dance, whether in her own body or in collaboration with other dancers.

Tânia decided to learn to play the Ecoerhu, a Chinese string instrument, and she didn’t do things by halves. “I wanted to learn how it should be learned, the Chinese way, so that I could use it in a ‘normal’ way and then explore other sounds on the instrument, things that shouldn’t be done,” she says. “I really want to merge the three sounds, the piano, the voice, and the Ecoerhu.” After presenting an exhibition of drawings at BoCA in 2017, “Toledo,” this time we get to know another artistic expression, Tânia in concert. This is where she is exploring the creative possibilities of the instrument, in a concert where, for the first time, she is also composing music for another performer, André Santos, who joins her on the piano. The lyrics are her own or texts by Fernando Pessoa.