Porto Municipal Theatre new season is synonymous with dance

After six months of closure due to the new coronavirus pandemic, Porto Municipal Theatre (TMP) will go back to performing, starting on 17th September, with all the necessary preventive measures issued by Health Authorities. 

This season, TMP comes back with dance as the main focus, with OCD Love, by Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar - renowned Israeli artists and founders of the dance company L-E-V.

This show takes to the stage in Portugal on 25th and 26th September, at the Grand Auditorium of Theatre Rivoli.

The following month, on 29th and 30th October, TMP presents Marlene Monteiro Freitas latest work, Mal - Embriaguez Divina, which is part of a special programming cycle devoted to the work that the choreographer and dancer carried out in the past years in Portugal.

The Cabo Verdean dancer, residing in Portugal, was awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Festival in 2018.

Besides the performances, the 10 day programming also includes cinema sessions, conferences and workshops, curated by Alexandra Balona.

Two best-ever moments of this new season are the rescheduling of the three plays "For four walls", "RainForest" and "Sounddance", that fall under the scope of the CCN - Ballet de Lorraine, in 2019, to mark the centenary of Merce Cunningham, an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of American modern dance for more than 50 years.

Also, Canzone per Ornella and Postcards from Vietnam signal the return of Raimund Hoghe to TMP. These two performances present the work by the German choreographer, and also playwright who worked with Pina Bausch for a decade. Hoghe brings to Porto the reputed dancer Ornella Ballestra and Swiss choreographer Maurice Béjart, as well as two of his favourite performers: Takashi Ueno e Ji Hey Chung, on 14th and 16th January.

February will be a month when performances will be at a high, with TMP hosting the iconic performance "The show must go on", on 12th and 13th February, by French choreographer Jérôme Bel, well known for his political and provocative approach.

Two decades after debuting his play, which resembles a sort of choreographic playlist, Bel takes it to the stage with 20 performers, from Lisbon and from Porto, and jointly presented by Culturgest (Lisbon) and Teatro Viriato (Viseu).

On 19 and 20 February, the Portuguese National Ballet (CNB) will head to Rivoli to perform "Dançar em tempo de guerra", a project that joins two works: Chronicle and A Mesa Verde (the last to be performed by the CNB happened in 1987), two plays written in the 1930s by choreographers Martha Graham and Kurt Jooss.

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