Teatro Municipal do Porto season 21/22
On-site and on-line, the driving force of the Department of Performing Arts of Ágora — Cultura e Desporto E.M. / Câmara Municipal do Porto
July
2021
Wed
21
We enter the 2021/2022 season feeling invigorated and renewed with several programming projects providing new impetus after a year and a half of working intermittently, going back and forth between on-site and on-line according to health regulations.
We tried to take advantage of this period to question our project, which has been carried out by Teatro Municipal do Porto (TMP) since 2014, thoroughly reflecting upon a new post-pandemic phase that will necessarily be different and anchored in the present context. We learned how to work better as a team and make the most of the on-line programming that kept us active throughout the entire previous season. For this very reason, given the tools we developed, the new audiences we reached and the know how we acquired, we held on to both the on-site and the on-line presence this season, which will provide everyone, wherever they may be, with a link to our programme.
The world has changed and cultural institutions, as its oracles, must keep track of that change. That is also why we “cleaned house” and coordinated the different projects we’re running and the facilities at our disposal.
The Department of Performing Arts at Ágora — Cultura e Desporto will assert itself in this way this season: a connecting circle between TMP, DDD – Festival Dias da Dança and the recently opened CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva, three key pieces to develop performing arts from Porto. The web of relations will be great and TMP, from which DDD and CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva stemmed, will play a pivotal coordinating role.
Combining new projects (aided by a new image that connects digital and printed communication) and well-known anchors in our programme, we restate our DNA and our mission: a project that is greatly rooted in dance and (in)disciplinary cross-cutting, with a strong international component (both in the programme it presents and in the network it weaves and from which Portuguese artists benefit) and ongoing support to artists and companies working from Porto.
This programme will also now be published three times per season, thus providing us with time and flexibility to react to works premiering in the meantime, which in this way can still find a presentation opening, not having to wait for a new programming cycle. So, the programme you’re holding ranges from September to December. In December, we’ll distribute the programme from January to March, and in March the programme that will bring the season to an end, covering April to July (also including the details of the festivals that take place in those months).
The first months of our programme are always intense. Choreographers like Jan Martens, Maguy Marin (who will restage her iconic UNWELT at Rivoli), Vera Mantero, Marlene Monteiro Freitas and Dimitris Papaioannou will share our stages with directors and companies from the city, such as Diogo Freitas, Paulo Mota, Ensemble and Porto Experimental Theatre (TEP), and with several other programmes dedicated to animated forms (FIMP – Porto International Puppet Festival), contemporary circus (Mostra Estufa), families (Foco Famílias), unruliness (Double Trouble #03) and thrilling musical findings (Understage).
This is also when we introduce two new projects: Retratos [Portraits], nights shared by two artists who present themselves through self-portraits (via already existing performances or commissions for this new setting), and On Fire, a series of talks jointly programmed by TMP and CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva. Around the iconic fireplace of our new space for creation, we make room to discuss current burning issues and the way in which arts stand before them, react to them and reflect upon them. Other partnerships with film festivals, and music or lectures programmes turn Teatro Municipal do Porto into the cultural meeting point for the entire city.
Learn all about it in these new pages [pdf programme], and find much further information about the on-site and on-line programme at teatromunicipaldoporto.pt.
Tiago Guedes, artistic director
and Teatro Municipal do Porto team
We tried to take advantage of this period to question our project, which has been carried out by Teatro Municipal do Porto (TMP) since 2014, thoroughly reflecting upon a new post-pandemic phase that will necessarily be different and anchored in the present context. We learned how to work better as a team and make the most of the on-line programming that kept us active throughout the entire previous season. For this very reason, given the tools we developed, the new audiences we reached and the know how we acquired, we held on to both the on-site and the on-line presence this season, which will provide everyone, wherever they may be, with a link to our programme.
The world has changed and cultural institutions, as its oracles, must keep track of that change. That is also why we “cleaned house” and coordinated the different projects we’re running and the facilities at our disposal.
The Department of Performing Arts at Ágora — Cultura e Desporto will assert itself in this way this season: a connecting circle between TMP, DDD – Festival Dias da Dança and the recently opened CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva, three key pieces to develop performing arts from Porto. The web of relations will be great and TMP, from which DDD and CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva stemmed, will play a pivotal coordinating role.
Combining new projects (aided by a new image that connects digital and printed communication) and well-known anchors in our programme, we restate our DNA and our mission: a project that is greatly rooted in dance and (in)disciplinary cross-cutting, with a strong international component (both in the programme it presents and in the network it weaves and from which Portuguese artists benefit) and ongoing support to artists and companies working from Porto.
This programme will also now be published three times per season, thus providing us with time and flexibility to react to works premiering in the meantime, which in this way can still find a presentation opening, not having to wait for a new programming cycle. So, the programme you’re holding ranges from September to December. In December, we’ll distribute the programme from January to March, and in March the programme that will bring the season to an end, covering April to July (also including the details of the festivals that take place in those months).
The first months of our programme are always intense. Choreographers like Jan Martens, Maguy Marin (who will restage her iconic UNWELT at Rivoli), Vera Mantero, Marlene Monteiro Freitas and Dimitris Papaioannou will share our stages with directors and companies from the city, such as Diogo Freitas, Paulo Mota, Ensemble and Porto Experimental Theatre (TEP), and with several other programmes dedicated to animated forms (FIMP – Porto International Puppet Festival), contemporary circus (Mostra Estufa), families (Foco Famílias), unruliness (Double Trouble #03) and thrilling musical findings (Understage).
This is also when we introduce two new projects: Retratos [Portraits], nights shared by two artists who present themselves through self-portraits (via already existing performances or commissions for this new setting), and On Fire, a series of talks jointly programmed by TMP and CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva. Around the iconic fireplace of our new space for creation, we make room to discuss current burning issues and the way in which arts stand before them, react to them and reflect upon them. Other partnerships with film festivals, and music or lectures programmes turn Teatro Municipal do Porto into the cultural meeting point for the entire city.
Learn all about it in these new pages [pdf programme], and find much further information about the on-site and on-line programme at teatromunicipaldoporto.pt.
Tiago Guedes, artistic director
and Teatro Municipal do Porto team
© DR
