NÔT
On one side, a wall of people; on the other, a wall of stones, as though "caught between the sword and the wall," a stage.
In an enchanted valley, Marlene Monteiro Freitas crafts a miniature spectacle to fit into vast spaces. NÔT, Cape Verdean Creole for ‘night’, draws inspiration from The Thousand and One Nights: an accumulation of many tales – some of love, others of war, some of journeys, others of beasts. These are weapon-tales that ensure the survival of their narrator, in a duel between imagination and a petrified heart. These are lament-tales that honor the absent, in a duel between life and death, prison and freedom, vice and virtue, reality and desire.
Thus unfolds the evening as an artifact of multiplication, projection, alienation, and enchantment. Night after night, Freitas writes, the stage will turn into an onion. Layer by layer, cloaked in scents and invisible splashes. Then appears the ‘storytelling mouth’, offering itself to the sword and the wall, adding yet another tale to the infinity of tales.
• Marlene Monteiro Freitas (Cape Verde, 1979), studied dance at P.A.R.T.S. (Brussels), at ESD and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon). She worked with choreographers such as Loïc Touzé, Emmanuelle Huynh, Tânia Carvalho and Boris Charmatz. Her creations include LULU (2023), Pierrot Lunaire (2021), Bacchae – Prelude to a Purge (2017) and Guintche (2010). The common denominator of these works is openness, hybridism, impurity and intensity. In 2015, in Lisbon, she co-founded, P.OR.K, the structure that since then has been producing her work. She won international awards, such as the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale or the Chanel Next Prize and the Evens Arts Prize. Since 2020, she co-curates the project (un)common ground, on the artistic and cultural inscription of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Marlene Monteiro Freitas is an Onassis Air Fellow 2025.
choreography Marlene Monteiro Freitas | choreography assistance Francisco Rolo | with Ben Green, Henri “Cookie” Lesguillier, Joãozinho da Costa, Mariana Tembe, Marie Albert, Miguel Filipe, Rui Paixão, Tomás Moital | set design Yannick Fouassier, MMF lights and technical direction Yannick Fouassier | costumes MMF, Marisa Escaleira | sound Rui Antunes | stage management Ana Luísa Novais | special stage prop Cláudio Silva Set | design internship Emma Ait-Kaci | artistic consultancy João Figueira, Martin Valdés-Stauber | production P.OR.K | diffusion Key Performance coproducers Festival d’Avignon (Avignon, FR); Berliner Festspiele (Berlin, DE); International Summer Festival Kampnagel (Hamburg, DE); Culturgest - Lisboa (Lisbon, PT); MC2: Maison de la Culture de Grenoble - Scène nationale (Grenoble, FR); Le Quartz - Scène Nationale de Brest (Brest, FR); La Comédie de Clermont- Ferrand scène nationale (Clermont-Ferrand, FR); Maison de la danse, Lyon – Pôle européen de creation (Lyon, FR); La Villette - Paris (Paris, FR); La Comédie de Genève & La Bâtie-Festival de Genève (Geneva, CH); Onassis STEGI (Athens, GR); Teatro Municipal do Porto (Porto, PT); Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels, BE); PACT Zollverein (Essen, DE) | residencies support O Espaço do Tempo; Alkantara; OPART, E.P.E./ESTÚDIOS VICTOR CÓRDON; Onassis AiR; MC2: Maison de la Culture de Grenoble - Scène nationale; International Summer Festival Kampnagel | institutional support Dançando com a Diferença | acknowledgements Carlos Duarte, Atelier MC2 Grenoble | the dramaturgical research of NÔT was supported by Onassis AiR in 2025
