Lígia Soares

Doing incredible things, exceeding ourselves, being the best at something, ‘champs’ as grandfathers call their grandsons, is still seen as a noble feature of humankind. It is that determination that we find in the people destined to win that served as an example to us, driving us to also win so many contests, long for challenges and exceed ourselves. What we never understood is what good that did to the world. This piece is meant to be said by two gymnasts as they prepare for high-level competition, collapsing with the impossibility of keeping focus in the face of present-day dilemmas. — Lígia Soares


Lígia Soares is a Portuguese choreographer and playwright. Her work has been presented at home and abroad, appearing in several theatre and contemporary dance programmes. Together with Andresa Soares, she was the artistic director of Máquina Agradável between 2001 and 2014. She also developed several programming contexts with other artists such as Demimonde or Face-a-Face. Since 2015, she has focused her research on finding scenic devices that include the presence of the spectator as part of the performance’s dramaturgy. Her plays Romance, Cinderela [Cinderella], Civilização [Civilisation] and Memorial have been published by Douda Correria. She won an artistic and literary creation grant from the Directorate-General for Books, Archives and Libraries (DGLAB) in 2020.

Co-presentation with:
Centro Cultural de Belém, March 4th and 5th, 2023