Marlene Monteiro Freitas Special Photo: Ferreira Santos
Marlene Monteiro Freitas is recognised as one of the most exciting and talented choreographers of her generation. She fascinates her audience with strong images, liveliness and humour, with a seemingly endless creative ability.
Born in 1979 in Cape Verde, Marlene Monteiro Freitas is a dancer and choreographer. She studied dance at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels and is now based in Lisbon. She has collaborated with Tânia Carvalho and Boris Charmatz, among others, both of whom have performed with us. Her work is characterised by openness, heterogeneity and intensity. She often invites fantasy universes free from normal constraints, creating situations as absurd as they are comical.
In 2015 the work was honoured Jaguar with the award for best choreography by the Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores. In 2018, she created Yellowish Canine 3 for the Batsheva Dance Company and was awarded the Silver Lion Prize for dance at the Venice Biennale. In 2020, her acclaimed work Mal - Embriaguez Divina at the Wiener Festwochen and this autumn she is coming to us with the work Bacchae.
Marlene Monteiro Freitas at Dansens Hus
Bacchae24-26 September 2021
Welcome to an existential trip where Euripides' tragedy Baccantes is dressed in a frenetic, visual festival costume, to the tune of Brazilian funk, pop...
Marlene receives the Silver Lion award
The Venice Biennale awarded the 2018 Silver Lion Prize to Marlene, stating "Freitas' work reveals the desire to break through the boundaries of aesthetic correctness. Working with the emotions rather than the senses, the choreography gestures to gestures and words that are difficult to express, opens up to the imagination, to our multiple selves, creates heterogeneous situations and beings, with the paradoxes they carry, forcing us to see things differently".The award ceremony was organised by Marie Chouinard at the Teatro alle Tese.
Aberrant Decodings (2017)
An experimental work staging musical pieces by Nicola Vicentino, Sigismondo d'India, Atanasius Kircher, Claudio Monteverdi, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann and Giulio Caccini. Instead of presenting the pieces in their original format, they are evoked through sounds and gestures.
(M)IMOSA - Twenty looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church (M) (2011)
The performance is a choreographic collaboration between the French choreographic duo Cecilia Bengolea & Francois Chaignaud, New York-based Trajal Harrell and Portuguese Marlene Monteiro Freitas. Together they explore what would have happened if vogue dancers from Harlem had gone down to Judson Church in Greenwich village and performed alongside the pioneers of postmodern dance. The work was shown in 2012 at MDT.
Interview with Marlene (2020)
Which performance has been unforgettable? Does she have a special ritual for her premieres? What is the importance of art? These are some of the questions that Etcetera magazine asked Marlene Monteiro Freitas.