ABOUT US

 

MADRASTA DANCE 

 

Founded in 2018, is a creation and audience mediation structure and dance company, where contemporary dance is the point of contact and departure for the research of ideas and ecosystems that are in constant movement, dialogue and interaction with various directions and layers, such as:

- Emphasising and enhancing places of invisibility, people, places, territories and artists, where creation, collaboration and artistic research encourage different questions and
results.
- Rethinking and de-formatting ideas and moulds for artistic projects, presentations and cultural and artistic offerings.
- Risk and deepen relationships and meanings with nature in rural areas, emphasising the importance and impact it can have on each human being. Relate landscape and territory to humans and non-humans.
- Relate and develop dialogues with the community and with emerging artistic issues and current social, political, environmental and economic affairs, where pressing issues that speak loudly constitute the transversality between community and artists, performing arts and territory.
- Artistic practices as places of experimentation and freedom, developed and aimed at different audiences, communities, professional artists, researchers and thinkers.
- Thought and body, thought and movement, fostering individual and collective awareness.
- Creating bridges with different audiences, creating bridges between artistic practices and creations and individual and collective human journeys.
- To listen to territorial needs and individual stories that have found the arts as places of alignment.
- To welcome and include difference in all its range of expression and diversity.
- To dialogue contemporary aesthetics with cultures, diversity and tradition.
- Valuing the individual journeys of each human being, and thus contributing to attracting and developing audiences, artistic literacy, democratisation and cultural democracy.
- It's not about reaching the whole world, but touching every human being in a meaningful way through the performing arts.
- Bringing people to people (2024, Kwendalima), providing an encounter with the other through the performing arts and

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BIOGRAPHY
Dance creations: Magner (2017) at M.A.R. - Mostra de Artes de Rua, Sines; Narrativa Interior (2018), premiered at Quinta da Regaleira, in Sintra; The Cave (2020); Poros (2020) premiered at the Desdobra-te Festival, organised by PédeXumbo (Évora); Body Lost (2021) premiered at the Comma Festival, in Rotterdam and the Periferias Festival (Sintra); Also noteworthy in its early career, between 2018 and 2019, were Concert Cycles: piano and poetry recitals; piano and singing; piano and dance held at Quinta da Regaleira and Monserrate Palace.
In 2022, the artistic creation Seara by Clara Marchana and Luis Fernandes won the ‘Creations for Dance 2022’ grant, promoted by PédeXumbo, where it had its premiere at the Desdobra-te 2022 Festival in Évora. This same Seara project was also one of those selected in 2023 for the Residencias de Creación e Investigación do Movemento - Atopémonos Bailando, held at the Museo Interativo de la Historia de Lugo in Spain; In 2023, Whales also fly was his recent creation, selected for the artistic residency and premiere at the 2023 M.A.R. festival in Sines, organised by Teatro do Mar.
In the area of collaboration and partnership, in 2021 it collaborated with Companhia Indiferente (inclusive theatre) on the theatre show Viagem (In)diferente, Lisbon; it co-produced with five other theatre companies the show Agámemnon (2021) and Filoctetes (2023), Sintra.
In 2023 it moved its headquarters from the Lisbon region to the center of Portugal, Ferreira do Zêzere.
From 2023 to 2024 it is collaborating in the international project (Creative Europe) PANG - Performing Arts for the Next Generation, where artists and teenagers work together in a process of co-creation, between Italy, Slovenia, Estonia and Portugal.
In 2023, she inaugurated her space C.A.R.MA.- Casa Artística e Rural da Madrasta, in Pias, Ferreira do Zêzere, with the aim of bringing contemporary dance and the performing arts closer together, boosting and developing them in the community and in this inland area of Portugal, while at the same time circulating and creating new public circuits to the area.
It organises and promotes various dance and movement workshops. In October 2023, it launched its first edition of the Zêzere Cinedança International Festival, a festival aimed at professionals in the field of video dance. In June of 2024 it lauched the first Edition of ARADO - International Dance and Performing Arts Festival, in the Village of Pias, Ferreira do Zêzere.

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