Marlene Monteiro Freitas: Bacchae – Prelude to a Purge
Dansens Hus
22/9, 19.00
Ticket: 380 – 150 NOK
(Also performed 23/9)
In Bacchae – Prelude To a Purge, choreographer Marlene Monteiro Freitas turns Greek tragedy into a riot. The artist has created her own visually striking, existentialist and occasionally demented adaptation of Euripides’s classical drama.
Eight dancers and five trumpet players participate in the staging which is part inspired by Freitas’s memories of carnivals on the Cape Verde islands where she grew up. Mythology and pop cultural references also feed into a mix that adopts the original play’s examination of the contrasting forces of order and irrationality.
Now based in Portugal, Freitas is the founder of dance company Compass and was awarded the Silver Lion by the Venice Biennale for dance in 2018. Her expressionist impulses have been let loose on Bacchae, allowing her to explore hysteria, madness, blindness and illusion. Euripides’s harsh moral universe is represented with extreme physicality in a visual language powerful enough for our own strange times.
Marlene Monteiro Freitas – Choreography
With Andreas Merk, Betty Tchomanga, Cookie, Cláudio Silva, Flora Détraz, Gonçalo Marques, Guillaume Gardey de Soos, Johannes Krieger, Lander Patrick, Miguel Filipe, Tomás Moital, Yaw Tembe.
Light and Space: Yannick Fouassier. Sound: Tiago Cerqueira.
Produced by Dansens Hus.
(Photo: Filipe Ferreira)
