Marlene Monteiro Freitas
Bacchantes - prélude pour une purge
© Bacchantes - prélude pour une purge, Marlene Monteiro Freitas © Laurent Philippe ©
© Bacchantes - prélude pour une purge, Marlene Monteiro Freitas © Laurent Philippe ©
© Bacchantes - prélude pour une purge, Marlene Monteiro Freitas © Laurent Philippe ©
Choreography, Marlene Monteiro Freitas
Featuring Andreas Merk, Cláudio Silva, Flora Détraz, Gonçalo Marques, Henri “Cookie” Lesguillier, Hsin-Yi Hsiang, Johannes Krieger, Lander Patrick, Marlene Monteiro
Freitas, Micael Pereira, Miguel Filipe, Tomás Moital, Yaw Tembe
Lights and space, Yannick Fouassier
Sound, Tiago Cerqueira
Tabourets, João Francisco Figueira, Luís Miguel Figueira
Director general, André Calado
Research, Marlene Monteiro Freitas, João Francisco Figueira
Produced by P.OR.K (Soraia Gonçalves, Joana Costa Santos - Lisbonne)
Distributed by Key Performance (Stockholm)
Co-produced by Teatro Nacional D. Maria II (Lisbon); Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels); Steirischer herbst Festival (Graz) & Alkantara Festival (Lisbon) with support from
NXTSTP – Culture Programme of the European Union; Norrlandsoperan
(Umeå); Festival Montpellier Danse 2017 (Montpellier); Bonlieu Scène nationale (Annecy) & La Bâtie-Festival de Genève dans le cadre du soutien FEDER du programme
Interreg France-Suisse 2014-2020; Teatro Municipal do Porto (Porto); Le
Cuvier Centre de Développement Chorégraphique (Nouvelle-Aquitaine); HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin); International Summer Festival Kampnagel (Hamburg); Athens and
Epidaurus Festival (Athens); Münchner Kammerspiele (Munich);
Kurtheater Baden (Baden); SPRING Performing Arts Festival (Utrecht); Zürcher Theater Spektakel (Zurich); Théâtre Public de Montreuil, centre dramatique national
(Montreuil); Les Spectacles vivants – Centre Pompidou (Paris)
Residency hosted by Polo Cultural Gaivotas | Boavista (Lisbon), O Espaço do Tempo (Montemor-o-Novo); Montpellier Danse à l´Agora, cité internationale de la danse
(Montpellier); ICI – CCN Montpellier – Occitanie/Pyrénées Méditerranée as part of its Par/ICI residency program (Montpellier)
Special thanks to Cristina Neves, Alain Micas, Bruno Coelho, Christophe Jullian, Louis Le Risbé, Manu Protopopoff, ACCCA – Companhia Clara Andermatt (Lisbon), ESMAE
(Lisbon), ESTC (Lisbon)
Co-directed by Le CENTQUATRE-PARIS; Festival d’Automne à Paris
This event is part of the 2022 France-Portugal Season
With support of LVMH, member of the Sponsors Committee of the 2022 France-Portugal Season
Bacchantes – prélude pour une purge, a polyphonic stage experience, combines snatches of text from the myth of Euripides with grotesque, fantastical carnival-like elements, and uses them as the basis for an opera of the monstrous, joyous kind. In this piece by Marlene Monteiro Freitas, the thirteen performers recount and breathe new life into the Dionysian ritual, as well as its links with the origins of tragedy.
In this piece of ‘total theatre’, an opera of bodies and sensations, Marlene Monteiro Freitas summons up myths and ghosts and turns them into a macabre dance. In Bacchantes – prélude pour une purge music, dance and mystery take us along a knife-edge journey polarised by the respective realms of Apollo and Dionysos, and in which a war of appearances and deceit is being waged. The fantastical elements are made possible via the graceful movements of the half-human, half-animal figures. Here Marlene Monteiro Freitas’s penchant for hybridisation is taken to new heights, whether it be a dada-ist fanfare, a carnival-inspired ballet, or a weird and wonderful incursion into a military-like world… all of this, and more, are present in Bacchantes. Using the work by Euripides as the driving force behind the piece, the choreographer treats us to a bewildering catalogue of metamorphoses. Last but not least, in the company of her thirteen performers, Marlene Monteiro Freitas’s Bacchantes provides us with a magnificent homage to the art of the troupe.
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