Bacchae - Prelude to a Purge
“A roller coaster from start to end; at times drawing you in and other times trying to force you away. It is comical and dark, provoking and sometimes just a little lovingly stupid.” – Get the Chance ★★★★
Bacchae – Prelude to a Purge is a vibrant, absurd, and carnivalesque (concert) performance that blurs the boundaries between music, dance, and mystery.
Festival Brandhaarden
Run time 135 minutes
Genre Dance
Language language no problem
Bacchae – Prelude to a Purge
With Brazilian funk, clownish antics, pop, and Ravel’s Boléro as its soundtrack, Marlene Monteiro Freitas invites you into the unpredictable world of Euripides – a universe where chaos and order, wildness and reason collide.
Freitas’ exuberant work delves deep into the human psyche, leading you through extremes: from madness to revelation, from fury to a longing for peace.
-|-
The dancers and musicians pull you into a hypnotic clash between Apollonian precision and Dionysian chaos. This daring production seduces, confounds, and confronts – an experience you won’t soon forget.
Press
DanceTabs
“What is most impressive is that none of this feels random or self-indulgent. There is a strictness and a sense of order and ritual behind this madness.”
The Stage
“Freitas’ seemingly inexhaustible imagination, and that of her performers, comes to the fore in this chaotic beauty.”
Marlene Monteiro Freitas
Marlene Monteiro Freitas (1979) is the figurehead of the new Portuguese dance scene. She is known for her abundant and expressionistic pieces, inspired by the carnival of her Cape Verdean youth, which combine grotesque figures with a powerful visual language that flirts with the extravagant worlds of fashion and pop culture. Freitas' work, situated at the intersection of dance and theater, is both visually captivating and thematically profound, addressing social issues and offering timely political commentary. Her performances are characterized by a unique blend of slapstick and serious undertones, with music playing a prominent role.
Born in Cape Verde, she was a co-founder of the dance group Compass and studied at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels, the Escola Superior de Dança, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. As a co-founder of P.OR.K., a production organization based in Lisbon, she has revitalized theatricality in dance. In recent years, she has transitioned to larger venues, where she often appears on stage as part of her performances, which always begin with an image that she envisions in her mind.
Freitas collaborates with a diverse group of creators from around the world, giving her work a dynamic and innovative quality that challenges and inspires audiences.
Brandhaarden
Brandhaarden is an international theatre festival that brings performances from notable foreign theatre makers to Amsterdam. The festival provides a unique overview of a single creator, house, writer, region, or theme. In previous editions, we highlighted directors such as Katie Mitchell, Milo Rau, and the collective Rimini Protokoll, writer Édouard Louis, the Southern European region (Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece), and city theatres such as Münchner Kammerspiele, Volksbühne Berlin, and Peter Brooks Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord.
Credits
Choreography | Marlene Monteiro Freitas With | Andreas Merk, Henri “Cookie” Lesguillier, Cláudio Silva, Flora Détraz, Gonçalo Marques, Hsin-Yi Hsiang, Johannes Krieger, Lander Patrick, Marlene Monteiro Freitas, Micael Pereira, Miguel Filipe, Tomás Moital, Yaw Tembe Light | Space | Yannick Fouassier Costumes | Marlene Monteiro Freitas with the support of Andreas Merk and Yannick Fouassier Sound | Tiago Cerqueira Stools | João Francisco Figueira, Luís Miguel Figueira Stage management | André Calado Research | Marlene Monteiro Freitas, João Francisco Figueira Production | P.OR.K – Soraia Gonçalves, Joana Costa Santos (Lisbon, PT) Distribution | Key Performance (Stockholm, SE) Co-production | Teatro Nacional D. Maria II (Lisbon, PT); Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels, BE), Steirischer herbst Festival (Graz, AT) & Alkantara (Lisbon, PT) with the support of the NXTSTP- Culture Programme of the European Union; NorrlandsOperan (Umeå, SE); Festival Montpellier Danse 2017 (Montpellier, FR); Bonlieu Scène nationale Annecy (Annecy, FR) & La Bâtie-Festival de Genève (Geneva, CH) within FEDER fund for Interreg France-Suisse 2014-2020; Teatro Municipal do Porto (Porto, PT); Le Cuvier – Centre de Développement Chorégraphique (Nouvelle-Aquitaine, FR); HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin, DE); International Summer Festival Kampnagel (Hamburg, DE); Athens and Epidaurus Festival (Athens, GR); Münchner Kammerspiele (Munich, DE), Kurtheater Baden (Baden, CH); SPRING Performing Arts Festival (Utrecht, NL); Zürcher Theater Spektakel (Zurich, CH); Nouveau Théâtre de Montreuil – centre dramatique national (Montreuil, FR); Les Spectacles Vivants / Centre Pompidou (Paris, FR) Residency support | Polo Cultural Gaivotas | Boavista (Lisboa, PT); O Espaço do Tempo (Montemor-o-Novo, PT); Montpellier Danse à l´Agora, cité internationale de la danse ; ICI – centre chorégraphique national Montpellier – Occitanie / Pyrénées-Méditerranée / Direction Christian Rizzo – – within the residence programme Par/ICI (Montpellier, FR) Acknowledgements | Cristina Neves; Alain Micas; Bruno Coelho; Christophe Jullian; Louis Le Risbé; Manu Protopopoff; ACCCA – Companhia Clara Andermatt (Lisbon, PT); ESMAE (Lisbon, PT); ESTC (Lisbon, PT)
More Brandhaarden
Brandhaarden is is financially supported by
