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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

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