Marlene Monteiro Freitas overloads our senses with her performance. Fascinating, humorous, highly musical, and off-beat, she stages the image of a world that is out of joint in many different ways.
Talk following the performance on Fri 06/10
In his ancient tragedy “The Bacchae” Euripides invokes the forces of delirium, irrationality, hysteria and madness. Ecstatically, they lead from bedazzlement to blindness and from blindness to revelation. He tells of cruelty and of the wish for peace, of excessive savagery and the striving for a simple life.
A subject ideally suited to the eccentric dancer and choreographer Marlene Monteiro Freitas. The Cape Verdean artist’s works always oscillate between bodily excess and cool abstraction, they are dark, abstract, comical and sensual in equal measure. In “Bacchae – Prelude to a Purge” thirteen performers grapple with theatre itself and its cathartic power. Assisted by thunderous trumpets, they whisper, sing or scream out their obsession, delving deep into the human psyche: a tightrope walk of intensity, a stress test for faith and convictions.
Marlene Monteiro Freitas creates an irresistible production that brings this classical ancient myth fully into the present day, accompanied by rhythm, movement and music.
Choreography Marlene Monteiro Freitas
With Cookie, Flora Détraz, Miguel Filipe, Guillaume Gardey de Soos, Johannes Krieger, Gonçalo Marques, Andreas Merk, Tomás Moital, Marlene Monteiro Freitas, Lander Patrick, Cláudio Silva, Betty Tchomanga, Yaw Tembe
Research Marlene Monteiro Freitas, João Francisco Figueira
Light and set design Yannick Fouassier
Sound Tiago Cerqueira
Stools João Francisco Figueira, Luis Miguel Figueira
Produced by P.OR.K
Distribution Key Performance
Co-produced by steirischer herbst festival, Kunstenfestivaldesarts and Alkantara supported by NXTSTP – Culture Programme of the European Union; TNDMII, NorrlandsOperan, Festival Montpellier Danse 2017, Bonlieu Scène nationale Annecy und La Bâtie-Festival de Genève im Rahmen von FEDER - programme Interreg France-Suisse 2014-2020; Teatro Municipal do Porto, Le Cuvier – Centre de Développement Chorégraphique, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, International Summer Festival Kampnagel, Athens and Epidaurus Festival, Münchner Kammerspiele, Kurtheater Baden, SPRING Performing Arts Festival, Zürcher Theater Spektakel, Nouveau Théâtre de Montreuil – centre dramatique national, Les Spectacles Vivants / Centre Pompidou
Residencies supported by O Espaço do Tempo, Montpellier Danse à l´Agora, cité internationale de la danse , ICI - centre chorégraphique national Montpellier - Occitanie / Pyrénées-Méditerranée / Direction Christian Rizzo – im Rahmen von Par/ICI
Thanks to Cristina Neves, Alain Micas, Bruno Coelho, Christophe Jullian, Louis Le Risbé, Manu Protopopoff, ACCCA – Companhia Clara Andermatt, ESMAE, ESTC
Co-presented by NXTSTP, with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union
In cooperation with Schauspielhaus Graz
steirischer herbst
Project management Michael Doubek
Marlene Monteiro Freitas (CV/PT)
Marlene Monteiro Freitas, born on the island of Sal/Cap Verde in 1979, works as a dancer and performance artist. Freitas studied at the Escola Superior de Dança and the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon and at the Performing Arts, Research and Training Studios (P.A.R.T.S.) in Brussels and has worked with Boris Charmatz, Tânia Carvalho and Emmanuelle Huynn, among others, in the course of her career. In 2005 she presented “Primeira Impressão”, the first creation of her own, with ten more following over the years – including “Bacchae – Prelude to a Purge” that will be on show for the first time in Austria at steirischer herbst and which, like all of Freitas’ works, is characterised by a combination of rhythmic music, mysticism and intense dance. Marlene Monteiro Freitas is also a member of the Lisbon-based P.OR.K. performance collective that she co-founded.
