PORTUGUESE PLATFORM FOR PERFORMING ARTS: PT. 23
The 8th edition of the Portuguese Platform for Performing Arts already has an official date and will take place from June 6th to 10th, 2023, in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal. In these five days, programmers, curators, artistic directors and those responsible for festivals and/or theaters will have the opportunity to see some of the most interesting works, created in the last two years in Portugal, in the areas of dance, theater and performance, selected by a highly skilled jury.
MEET THE FIRST 17 SELECTED PROJECTS FOR PT. 23!
André e. Teodósio
with INFO MANIAC
Bernardo Chatillon
with Reindeer Age #1
Bernardo Chatillon is a rather peculiar artist on the Portuguese scene. He has a vast and diverse technical and artistic education – from circus to theater and dance – had his debut as a professional actor in 2006, was a resident actor at Teatro Nacional D. Maria in the mid 10’s and, after that, he lived in Berlin where he worked with artists like Meg Stuart, Jeremy Wade, among others. Recently returning to Portugal, he is currently based in a small village in the interior of Portugal, where he develops his work. With Reindeer Age #1, Bernardo presents us “a suspended journey that lodges itself in the body, around notions of time, structures and lines of text in movement, that explores unfinished situations, doubts and new beginnings to reveal and communicate something that already exists, something that is to come (…)” It is worth noting, in this beautiful and sensible piece, his ability to use autobiographical references and scenographic elements that at first glance might seem banal, reshaping them, showing that every gesture, every word, every leap, every look, every breath, in a certain context, is a world that can be transformed.
Carincur
with Echoes from a Liquid Memory
Carincur is one of the most recent names on the Lisbon art scene, whose work is known for crossing different fields such as performance, sound, digital and visual arts. With an appealing language and a singular approach to her working materials, Carincur often creates sensorial and immersive pieces and also collaborates as performer and sound designer in works by other Portuguese artists. Echoes from a Liquid Memory is a transdisciplinary piece where the musical composition is taken to the limits of its possibilities through manipulation and processing of submerged and propagated digital sound and image through water. This action creates a new universe, a new ecosystem, where interactions of organic and non-organic matter create changes in the environment, while physical and digital coexist in an abstract narrative. This piece focuses on the fragmentation of memory, space, time and, consequently, it reflects the volatile memory of the human being’s existence.
Daniel Matos
with VÄRA
One of the key emerging artists in the Portuguese contemporary dance scene, Daniel Matos is known for bold, sophisticated and physically intense choreographies, often working with particularly vigorous performers. Despite his young age, his language is remarkably mature and rigorous, being able to combine the energy and drive commonly associated with youth with a poetic sharpness more commonly found in more experienced artists. Daniel’s latest work, VÄRA, is a choreographic object that arises from the urgency of the encounter between bodies. On stage, seven bodies inhabit a space surrounded by plastics, evoking the exposure of meat in a slaughterhouse. It is here that they seek and enhance the attempt at dialogue through repetition, accumulating mistakes and amplifying the confrontation with each one’s reality.
Diana Niepce
with The Other Side of Dance
Diana Niepce is one of the most remarkable artists on the Portuguese contemporary dance scene. She is a choreographer, dancer, researcher and writer, known for her defiant, sensitive, groundbreaking and extremely rigorous work, where she radically expands the limits of the body, of movement and of dance itself. After Anda, Diana (2020), her previous piece in which she portrays her recovery process as a dancer after an accident that made her tetraplegic, she now presents us The Other Side of Dance, a bold, violent and sophisticated choreography that uses the apparent fragilities of the body as an element of power and overcoming, giving visibility and strength to historically marginalized discourses.
Gaya de Medeiros
with BAqUE — Contorno do Gosto
Gio Lourenço
with Boca Fala Tropa
Keyla Brasil
with Meu Profano Corpo Santo
Marco da Silva Ferreira
with C A R C A S S
Marco da Siva Ferreira, a brilliant choreographer with an exciting and innovative movement language and a key figure in the new generation of Portuguese contemporary dance, will present his most recent work, C A R C A S S, a strong piece for a group of 10 exciting performers and 2 live musicians, using dance as a tool to research community, the construction of collective identity, memory and cultural crystallization. They depart from familiar footwork, from clubbing, balls, battles, ciphers, and the studio, to approach standardized and immutable folk dances that they have inherited and revisited. How does one decide to forget and become a memory? What is the role of individual identities in building a community? What is their driving force?
Mário Coelho
with I’M STILL EXCITED!
Mário Coelho is one of the most talented and prolific artists of the newest generation of Portuguese theater makers. His works are usually fast, intense, loud, vibrant, and full of rich and complex dramaturgical operations. He is also known for working continuously with several extraordinarily talented and energetic actors from the most recent generation of Portuguese actors. The performance I’M STILL EXCITED! a story of “boy meets girl” and “girl meets boy”, is a work about the end of a relationship between two people, with the backdrop of a party that is also a theater rehearsal. Mário says that this piece assumes itself as an intimate, rough, raw and deeply pop object.
Piny
with G RITO
Piny is currently one of the most daring and potent artists working in the Portuguese contemporary dance scene. With a wide range of influences in her work, such as architecture, set design, clubbing or urban, african and oriental dances, she is known for her challenging and provocative approach to ideas such as the decolonization of the female body, erotism, desire, pleasure and pain. With an all-female cast, Piny will present her latest group piece, G RITO about which she refers: We cross traditions, rural rituals with urban rituals, private and public rituals, so often forbidden, knowing that what we do and what we are would condemn us to death in many countries.
Rogério Nuno Costa
with Missed-en-Abîme
Rogério Nuno Costa is a Portuguese performance artist, theater director, actor, dramaturgist, researcher, teacher, curator and writer based in Helsinki, Finland, but working regularly in Portugal. He can be considered one of the most critical artists in the Portuguese performing arts field, often making performances that radically destabilize the ruling system, severely criticizing the art of our time, where he stands as an observer who, while observing, is making. Missed-en-Abîme, Rogério’s most recent performance, presents itself to the public with a text that would deserve to be posted on every door of every theater, at the same time it should be spoken inside to each and every spectator. A disarming “psychobiography of a losing hero” – the artist, as one of the most important statements on the state of the art in recent times.
Tânia Carvalho
with Versa-Vice
Tânia Carvalho, a reference in Portuguese contemporary dance, has a distinctive movement language and a unique sense of depth translated into works that defy classification and excel in composition. Our platform will present her new creation, Versa-Vice, that will premiere in Paris at Bienal du Val du Marne, in March. About it, Tânia writes: “I don’t have concrete ideas about my work. In these times when people tend to explain things rationally, it’s hard for me to find a way to defend my work and write about it. I try not to use my mind any more than I use my other senses. The mind is only a small part of the game. I try to open my heart to the unknown in me. This way I get closer to everything that exists, and I think this way I get closer to my purpose of being an artist in this life”.
For this new work with 9 dancers, Tânia, also a brilliant musician, will compose and perform live.
Tita Maravilha & Cigarra
with Trypas-Corassão
Tita Maravilha is a groundbreaking Brazilian artist whose transgressive, divergent, provocative and witty works have been blasting the Lisbon underground scene in the last few years. She works mainly in theater, performance and music, mixing elements and crossing boundaries to achieve a hybrid and compelling language. In collaboration with Cigarra, a brazilian DJ and audiovisual artist who played an important role in São Paulo’s effervescent underground scene, they present Trypas-Corassão, a theater-concert which is also a political-artistic-aesthetic project, consisting of a hybrid creation focused on post-romantic and over-dramatic aesthetics, where theater becomes the basis for blurring the boundaries between the arts, using performance and musical resources as scenic possibilities.
Vânia Doutel Vaz
with The Elephant in the Middle of the Room
Vânia Doutel Vaz is a Portuguese-born Angolan dancer and choreographer. As a freelance artist she has worked with several artists and choreographers and has been a member of many dance and theater companies, both national and internationally. Vânia’s last piece, The Elephant in the Middle of the Room, is a critical, sharp and sophisticated proposal about the expectations of power structures towards artists, made with a text full of humor and irony, and with an enjoyable set of compositional resources and a flawless technical execution. With this work, Vânia Doutel Vaz proves, once again, that she is a remarkably talented artist, with a very singular and incisive approach to contemporary dance.
Victor de Oliveira
with Limbo
Victor de Oliveira is a skilled and experienced actor, author and director based in Paris who, in recent years, has performed on some of Europe’s leading stages. Born in Mozambique, he spent his youth in Portugal and started his theater career in Lisbon, having later attended the Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique in Paris. In his latest piece, Limbo, Victor questions the horrors of colonization and the politics of racial hierarchy in order to understand the position that African descendants currently occupy in the former European colonial powers. Through a touching and extremely rigorous work, Victor talks about his family’s origins and history, composing a mosaic of personal memories, historical facts, colonialism, slavery, and current events.
Xana Novais
with How to Kill Naked Women
Xana Novais is a young, intense and controversial performance artist who uses her own body to explore and to question the limits of the artwork and the boundaries between fiction and reality. In this group piece – How to Kill Naked Women – Xana tries to “understand how she manages to prevent her work from dying, creating a peculiar safe space for herself, a performance that leads one to reflect upon the possibility of truly marking oneself with an artistic practice, this time not only on her body, but also on her performers’ bodies.” In this piece, Xana also questions the notions of efficacy and expectation, together with a virtuous group of performers, a tattoo artist, and an eloquent video work.
MORE INFORMATIONS FOR PROGRAMMERS, CURATORS AND DIRECTORS
GET TO KNOW OUR JURY
ANA ROCHA
Ana Rocha (Porto, 1982) was a producer for visual arts and performing arts. She is a curator, choreographer, performer and dramaturge. She has been working in the cultural and artistic field as an independent freelancer for 21 years. She works as cultural mediation and programming (TAMANHO M, XXATENEUXXI’19, Cultura em Expansão (2019 to 2022), To School Out of School’19 \ Colectivos Pláka, TanzKongress’19, ViaAberta\Mid Summers Night Dream’19, CURADURA’21, Set-Up’21, A Casa de Sibila’22, among others), collaborating with informal organizations for the arts, artists-run collectives and public institutions. Ana collaborates as a freelance consultant for performing arts in different contexts & disciplines, artists and structures as Sekoia and Bela Associação, and Braga’27 ECC, among others.
CLÁUDIA GALHÓS
Cláudia Galhós (Lisbon, 1972) writes about culture, performing arts and dance for newspapers since 1994, in publications such as BLITZ, O Independente, Público, Jornal de Letras, Mouvement, Visão, among others. She has been writing about performing arts for Expresso since 2005. For television, she was editor of the weekly cultural magazine about culture “AGORA” and Palcos Agora (RTP2 (2012 to 2015)) and editor of the weekly supplement «Artes de Palco», of the program «Magazine » (RTP2, 2004 to 2006). She was the editor and author of the book “There is nothing that is beyond your imagination” (2015, within the framework of the European network “Imagine 2020 – Art and Climate Change”, which brings together 10 European theaters, led by Kaaitheater, in Brussels).
CRISTINA PLANAS LEITÃO
BA in Contemporary Dance from ArtEZ (BA), Arnhem (NL), 2006. In July 2022, she takes over the Interim Artistic Direction of the Performing Arts Department of ÁGORA, Porto (Teatro Municipal do Porto, DDD – Festival Dias da Dança, CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva) and in February 2023, will assume the co-Artistic Direction, together with Drew Klein. As a performing arts programmer, she highlights her collaboration with DAP, under the Artistic Direction of Tiago Guedes, and where she is part of the programming team for the regular seasons of TMP (from 2019), Festival DDD since the 2020 edition and CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva developing his artistic project and mission since its opening in 2021. Her aggregating curatorial practice is focused on the development of sustainable creation formats, new narratives and care relationships within the performing arts.
FRANCISCO FRAZÃO
MARIA JOÃO GUARDÃO
NÁDIA YRACEMA
ODETE
PATRÍCIA PORTELA
Patrícia Portela is a writer and performance maker born in 1974, living between Belgium and Portugal. She studied set and costume design in Lisbon and in Utrecht where she made her master of arts, she has studied film in Ebeltoft at the European Film College, Denmark, and has a master in Philosophy from the International Institute of Leuven, Belgium. She is a founder member of the Prado cultural association since 2003 and a curator at the collective editions Prado since 2008. Patrícia Portela writes chronicles for Jornal de Letras, Jornal do Centro and Coffeepaste. She was the Artistic Director of Teatro Viriato from March 2020 to February 2022.
PEDRO BARREIRO
PEDRO PENIM
Born in Lisbon in 1975, Pedro Penim is a director, actor and dramaturgist. With a degree in Theater from the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema and a Master’s in Cultural Management from ISCTE, in 1995 he founded the Teatro Praga collective, an emblematic company of contemporary Portuguese theatrical creation. He is also the founder of the cultural space Rua das Gaivotas6, in Lisbon, a project that welcomes creations by new artists. Pedro Penim’s work – which extends to programming, translation, teaching and lecture activity – has already been presented in several festivals throughout the Portuguese territory, as well as in several countries in Europe, South America, Asia and the Middle East.
RUI HORTA
Rui Horta started dancing at the age of 17 at Ballet Gulbenkian. He studied, taught and performed in New York for several years. In 1990, he founded the S.O.A.P Dance Theater Frankfurt, where he created, over 7 years, six programs which toured all over the world. From 1998 to 2000 he worked in Munich, at the Muffathalle, where he created “Bones & Oceans”, “Zeitraum” and “Blindspot”. In August 2000, he returned to Portugal (Montemor-o-Novo), where he founded the multidisciplinary center for research and creation O Espaço do Tempo.
RUI TORRINHA
Rui Torrinha is currently the Artistic Director of Centro Cultural Vila Flor (CCVF) and Performing Arts programming. He directs international annual festivals like GUIdance, Westway LAB and Gil Vicente covering different art fields such as contemporary dance, music and theatre. He also runs the support plan for the performing arts creation process connected to CCVF and Centro de Criação de Cardoso (CCC) in the form of coproductions and artistic residencies. He has been the main coordinator, on behalf of A Oficina, of several EU projects (ex: INES, ETEP, AEROWAVES) and national networks. In 2012, Torrinha was chosen as one of the members for artistic programming team of Guimarães 2012, European Capital of Culture.
TÂNIA GUERREIRO
Tânia Guerreiro has worked in various areas of show production, cinema, visual arts and festivals, such as Festival Atlântico, Temps d’Images, Alkantara, Casa d’Os Dias da Água, O Som e A Fúria, ZDB, Jangada de Pedra, where she worked in production, management, fundraising, development of European projects and communication. She created the Self-Mistake project in 2019, which promotes artistic creation, in a context of experimentation and risk, in the areas of dance and contemporary performance. Under the Self-Mistake program, she supports several emerging artists with scholarships, monitoring and support for their work.