
A dance of the Forests




Zia Soares, director
Then I realized it was time.
The world is time.
A dance of the forests is a world that is created in time, in a forest of sticks, with devouring eyes, gaping mouths, arms that speak, legs that fly, skies that are ground.
Weird actors made of time –
pre-history,
pre-invasion,
pillage,
independence,
freedom that has not yet arrived,
for coming
and ancestry –
compete for the places of power, death, life and (re)birth.
They dare to be divinity, humanity, evil and the Forest. But they are always mutations of time that break boundaries.
“Fall into the underground currents”, navigate “through the hardened crust of ancient vomit” to finally arise into the clearing of time which is a hundred generations ahead, where at the welcome of the Dead the sonic corrupts the verb, speech tears the shape and the image shows itself:
Black. Dismembered.
“All necks are creaking from looking up so much.” There is pain. The bodies then have to rub themselves until the blood demons swell and explode. Red.
“Give the dead space to dance.”
The bodies have spasms, the whole forest piles up and the Head of the Forest uncovers the ants whose hair stands on end “like scorpion tails.
The Dead Man and The Dead Woman, brought back to life by the God Aroni, arrive at the Gathering of the Tribes. In a strange ritual of death, atonement, disobedience and rebirth The Dead Man and The Dead Woman confront four mortals: Rola, a prostitute who in her previous life was Madame Turtle; Adenebi, a court historian for Emperor Mata Kharibu, is now a council orator; Agboreko, was a diviner for Emperor Mata Kharibu and in this life maintains the same activity; and Demoke, a sculptor, who was once a court poet.
They all carry wounds from another time, what precedes them is also what determines their present, they are the before and what follows, the human and the forest. All are simultaneously what they are and what they were – the dead and the living too. Like a botanical metaphor devouring the sense of the world, the more one advances in the action, the more one goes back in time.
director Zia Soares
text Wole Soyinka
translation Rita Correia
dramaturgy and other texts Zia Soares
interpretation Ana Valentim, Cláudio da Silva, Gio Lourenço, Júlio Mesquita, Matamba Joaquim, Miguel Sermão, Rita Cruz, Vera Cruz
set and costume design Neusa Trovoada
music Xullaji
light design Jorge Ribeiro
direction and movement assistance Vânia Doutel Vaz
voz off Xullaji, Zia Soares
costume making Aldina Jesus Atelier
photography Mónica de Miranda, Estelle Valente
video (teasers) António Castelo
intern (Procultura scholarship) Noé João
executive production Aoaní d’Alvaco
production Teatro GRIOT, São Luiz Teatro Municipal
support Academia Arte & Dança, Batoto Yetu, Casa da Dança, Junta de Freguesia da Misericórdia, Khapaz, KMT-Associação Moreira Team, Polo Cultural Gaivotas Boavista
special thanks Carlos Caetano, Elson Moreira, Estufa Fria de Lisboa