Sónia Baptista

I started working on this piece based on my own personal sadness, trying to touch the sadness of the world in general from there—playing touch and go with me touching—, but I went around the world to return to my personal sadness in the end. “The more you run from something, the closer it remains.” I’m not just sad, I also get all mixed up and give myself the runaround. Why sad? Why not? How not to be a living thing and not get sad with the state of the world? How not to get even sadder when you’re already sad by nature, as a result, by default or due to genetics? I realised that the discourse of this work is rooted in a concept, or artistic movement (could it be?), which I called: Psycho-Poetics of the Browser (Žižek, eat your heart out). I realised that, over the course of this long investigation of ours, I gathered fragments, sentences, ideas, searches that pointed to a reflexion on the state of the world (the world must end!) and on the state of people, particularly women, regarding the world and Earth, an increasingly less natural planet. My roots are eco-feminist, eco-queer, holistic-philosophical, strange, deep. Those roots unearthed other treasures—rather serious, not so serious, absurd, vulnerable—in a kind of anatomy of sadness, as a yielding space, a sharing space, a space that generates pain and hope. Hope in what? I’m not sure, I don’t have answers, but if one were to insist, I’d say: in love. Looking at sadness and death in the eye is not easy, but it is necessary. So as to live better, if not peacefully, at least in an interesting way. “Do you want to be a happy or an interesting person?” Between the shock and the awe of everyday life. — Sónia Baptista


Sónia Baptista (Lisbon,1973) attended the Contemporary Dance Performance Course by Fórum Dança and obtained the master researcher degree in choreography and performance from the University of Roehampton (London, United Kingdom) with distinction. She furthered her training with several dance, music, theatre and video workshops and attended the art history course at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the Nova University of Lisbon. She worked with several artists and companies as a performer and co-creator, including Laurent Goldring, Patrícia Portela, Aldara Bizarro, Vera Mantero, Thomas Lehmann, Arco Renz, Cão Solteiro, AADK, Lígia Soares, Sílvia Real and Clara Amaral.
In her work, she explores and experiments with dance, music, literature, theatre and video. In 2001, she won the Ribeiro da Fonte New Talent Award from the Ministry of Culture in the dance category for Haikus (her first piece). Among her subsequent creations, she highlights Icebox Fly. Winter Kick (2003), Subwoofer (2006), Vice-Royale.Vain-Royale.Vile-Royale (2009), Peaufine (2011), Tempus Fugit (2012), Today Is It a Squirrel? (2013), in the fall the fox, e na queda raposar (2014), Assentar sobre a subida das águas (2016), Querer do Corpo, Peso (2017), Triste in English from Spanish (2017), I Call Her Will (2019) and Sozinhar (2019). In 2019, she creates two pieces with last-year students from the theatre courses at ESTAL – Higher School of Technology and Arts of Lisbon and ESTC – Lisbon Theatre and Film School, Lobisomem – The Musical and O FUCK! (BR)EXIT, co-stages the opera TNSoMDN, and co-creates Mise en Âbime and Could Be Worse. In 2020, she starts a project with the National Ballet of Portugal (CNB), Planeta Dança, and premieres The Anger! The Fury! at the Alkantara Festival. She writes dramaturgical texts for other creators and choreographs for film, video and theatre, including Miguel Clara Vasconcelos, André Godinho, Teatro Praga, Ricardo Neves-Neves and Cão Solteiro. She published eight books and numerous essays, poems and writings in magazines and digital platforms. She collaborates with Fórum Dança, PED and FOR, with ESD – Lisbon School of Dance, ESTC and ESTAL, and with CNB in education, creation, writing and reflexion projects. Throughout her artistic career, her work has had the support of the Ministry of Culture – Directorate-General for the Arts, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, GDA Foundation and the National Centre for Culture. Her work has been presented at several festivals and theatres in Portugal and abroad. She is associated artist at AADK Portugal.