DDD 2026 at TMP

Welcome to the 10th edition of DDD.
For ten years, DDD has brought together remarkable artists and curious publics in Porto, Matosinhos, and Gaia, in celebration of dance and its capacity to speak to this particular moment — the moment we are living in Across performances, workshops, conversations, and parties, DDD has showcased the pioneering spirit of contemporary dance, championing artists whose ideas address the current course of the world and whose practices ignite our collective imagination.
This year is no different.
We enter this edition of the festival in what feels like a period of significant change. For many, regardless of identity or persuasion, the world feels unrecognizable. A system of values once perceived as sacrosanct appears diminished, if not buried. At the same time, the material conditions of our natural world continue to evolve, forcing adaptations to our daily lives and long-term plans. Increasingly, we are led to doubt what we see with our own eyes— a logic shaped by new technologies that have taught us to distrust many of the images presented to us as fact.
We are at a crossroads.
And so, what is the role of a dance festival amidst such uncertainty? The archive of humanity is full of civilizations that have turned to dance to make sense of the world around them: dance as cultural expression, and as a terrorizing battle cry; to lionize the individual, and to dissolve the ego; as a tool for liberation from oppressive forces, and for the imposition of rigid systems. Dance has long dramatized cosmic chaos, using gesture to carve out forms of understanding where clarity seems absent. As the world draws toward this intersection, can dance serve as an engine for future prospecting?
Many of the performances in this year’s festival take on this very task. Some reflect on what has brought us to this point, engaging with ancestral connections to the environment and the legacies of lived and cultural trauma. Others speculate on where we might go next, crafting scenarios that are at once idyllic and dystopian, technophilic and techno-skeptic. Several works affirm ethics through practice, building their collaborations around shared authorship and collective responsibility, suggesting that the future of artistic creation may lie in shared endeavor rather than singular genius.
These varied visions and approaches coalesce to create a map of possibilities that is only achievable within the context of a festival like DDD. Each performance takes us somewhere different — a physical location, a particular moment in time, or a space within the vast imaginary. It is the festival’s abundance of possibility, and its disruption of habitual rhythms, that opens new ways of experiencing the world.
While the destination emerging from these many encounters remains undefined, we invite you to join us — the festival teams, partners, artists, and public — at the intersection of these times.
See you along the way.
— DDD - Festival Dias da Dança