Marlene Monteiro Freitas
Bacchantes – prélude pour une purge
decemberdec 13 – 16
decemberdec 18 – 21
Choreography, Marlene Monteiro Freitas
With Andreas Merk, Betty Tchomanga, Cookie, Cláudio Silva, Flora Détraz, Gonçalo Marques, Guillaume Gardey de Soos, Johannes Krieger, Lander Patrick, Marlene Monteiro Freitas, Miguel Filipe, Tomás Moital, and Yaw Tembe
Lighting and space design, Yannick Fouassier
Sound, Tiago Cerqueira
Stools, João Francisco Figueira, and Miguel Figueira
A Production by P.OR.K (Lisbonne)
Distribution | Key Performance (Stockholm)
Co-produced by TNDMII (Lisbon) ; Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels) ; Steirischer herbst Festival (Graz) & Alkantara Festival (Lisbon) with support from NXTSTP – EU Cultural Programme Programme ; NorrlandsOperan (Umeå) ; Festival Montpellier Danse 2017 ; Bonlieu Scène nationale (Annecy) & La Bâtie – Festival de Genève as part of FEDER aid from the Interreg France-Suisse 2014-2020 programme ; Teatro Municipal do Porto ; Le Cuvier – CDC d’Aquitaine ; HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin) ; Kampnagel (Hamburg) ; Athens and Epidaurus Festival ; Münchner Kammerspiele (Munich) ; Kurtheater Baden ; SPRING Performing Arts Festival (Utrecht) ; Zürcher Theater Spektakel (Zurich) ; Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil, centre dramatique national ; and Les Spectacles vivants – Centre Pompidou (Paris)
In association with the Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil, centre dramatique national ; Festival d’Automne à Paris for performances at the Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil, centre dramatique national In association with Les Spectacles vivants – Centre Pompidou (Paris) ; Festival d’Automne à Paris for performances at the Centre Pompidou
Artists residency at O Espaço do Tempo (Montemor-o-Novo), Montpellier Danse à l’Agora, cité internationale de la danse, and ICI – Centre chorégraphique national de Montpellier Languedoc-Rousillon as part of the Par/ICI (Montpellier) residency programme
With support from Adami
First performed on the 20th April 2017 at Teatro Nacional D. Maria II (Lisbon)
Marlene Monteiro Freitas’s productions are of the no holds barred variety, and European stages cannot get enough of them. This time around, the young Cape Verdian choreographer with a passion for the mysterious and untamed emotion, embarks thirteen dancers on an intense bacchanal inspired by Euripides. In it, the human being finds itself torn between reason and madness.
Bacchantes – prélude pour une purge is the first time that Marlene Monteiro Freitas embarks on a project of this scale. Those who are familiar with the work of this young choreographer, and her avowed fascination for the strangeness and transgressive nature of the street carnival, will not be surprised to see her delving into this work by Euripides. After training with Teresa De Keersmaeker, in Brussels, and at the Fondation Gulbenkian, in Lisbon, she danced, among others, for Emmanuelle Huynh, Loïc Touzé and Boris Charmatz, before collaborating with François Chaignaud and Cecilia Bengolea. From 2010 onwards, she then began embarking on her own projects (Jaguar, De marfim e carne…, Paraiso, Guintche…). Impurity, animality and the expression of raw emotions are at the core of her preceding works. Here, once again, her Bacchae are a mixture of moving, colliding moving bodies, madness and turmoil. The human psyche finds itself succumbing to contradictory influences, torn between Apollo’s harmonious, rational side and Dionysus’s wild, instinctive side. In the hands of the choreographer, this detour via Greek mythology does not, however, rule out the possibility of dance. Far from it. As in all her productions, the moving bodies of her dancers enable us to stare the chaos of the contemporary world straight in the face.
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