For this pilot edition, we invited Público's journalist, Mariana Duarte, to write a situated text, both in Porto and in time, in direct dialogue with the context.

Other ways of doing
things for other ways of feeling

by Mariana Duarte

Creating a festival in 2026 has everything to be a predictable and uninspired gesture.

Portugal is now a country of festivals. Small, medium, or large, covering various artistic fields, with varying degrees of overlap between them. It is a format that is almost exhausted, too often repeating a pre-written script with the usual protagonists, replicating the same logic as the regular programming of cultural institutions, reproducing itself to achieve cautious longevity, rather than permanence nourished by inventiveness, enthusiasm for the unexpected, and the acceptance that, one day, it might make more sense to end than to continue.

ℳ𝓊𝓁𝒶 does not invent the wheel, it is true, but it turns it in other directions.

It is important to look at it in the context of the city where it was born. Porto has a solid and valuable performing arts fabric, especially in dance. There is a programming dynamic that did not exist a decade ago, greater plurality, diversification (still insufficient, though) of creators and audiences. What is lacking, however, is a balance between institutional and independent initiatives, in a city where the meaning and activation of “independent” has been manipulated and distorted.

This is not an inconsequential desire for anti-power in an era where almost everything is co-opted, but rather a balance that opens space for constructive confrontation on both fronts and for a complementarity that allows for gaps – because from these gaps can emerge glimpses of other possibilities and dialogues, formats and encounters, respecting and welcoming both successful and unsuccessful experiences, the shots in the dark, the processes of growth between peers and between strangers. It is necessary to run one’s fingers over, to rave, to invent; not just to fulfill. It is necessary to invest in less formal and static modes of production, curation, and access to culture.

ℳ𝓊𝓁𝒶 contributes to opening these gaps in the territory of festivals. In time, space, ways of doing and proposing conviviality based on the performing arts, as well as going beyond them. After all, hybridity and contamination are essential to advance dance, theater, and performance, not only as disciplines but also as areas of curatorial action.

It does so in partnership with venues in the city center that have been experimenting with these gaps, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing: Sismógrafo, Mala Voadora, Hotelier, Teatro de Ferro, Rampa, and Passos Manuel. As stated by the creators of ℳ𝓊𝓁𝒶, programmer Cristina Planas Leitão and choreographer and dancer Luísa Saraiva, this festival-encounter “does not want to grow to become something else. It does not intend to replace or represent, but to bring together and add value.” It seems like a good start to the conversation.

And at the beginning of ℳ𝓊𝓁𝒶's conversation is the body.

From the very beginning, the concept of the project, running from sunset to sunrise, was inspired by the solar liturgy of northwestern Portugal, an ancestral practice in which time was organized according to the path of the sun, singing, popular oral tradition, and a sense of community. This relationship with temporality had a strong implication for the body. In the body of the workforce, in the body of leisure, in the body of rest, in the physical, spiritual, and artistic body; in the body that traversed all these states. ℳ𝓊𝓁𝒶 proposes that we take a break from the temporal organization rooted in neoliberal capitalism, around the clock and routines with specific schedules and appointments, including cultural fruition.

Here, we can watch a performance in the early afternoon or at dawn, participate in nighttime reading sessions, or take a purifying bath before sunrise according to ancestral practices, courtesy of Dori Nigro and Paulo Pinto at SALVALAVALMA. Have meals with acquaintances and strangers, try astrological charts and tarot readings. Other ways of doing things to stimulate other ways of feeling. Other ways of feeling to broaden other ways of observing. The gaps that need to be explored.

The body is also at the center of the proposals that make up the program. In a transversal way, there is a palpable idea of ritual – a word that has been overused in the performing arts in recent years, but which is not out of place here. Ritual in the sense that the pieces and other activities call for immersion and concentration, proximity and a relational dimension, a cadence calibrated by another understanding of time and space. The fact that much of the program takes place at night/dawn invites other types of interpretations, imaginations, and unrests. It is not, therefore, only the performer's body that is involved; it is also that of the spectator.

Although there are no specific themes in the program, there are subjects that stand out and overlap: fear, power relations, violence, sensuality, affection, intuition, memory. All of this has a beginning, middle, and end in the body. “I like to know (...) that listening is done with the whole body,” writes Piny in the synopsis of liminal, a performance she will present at ℳ𝓊𝓁𝒶. These accurate words reverberate in This Resting, Patience, by Polish choreographer and dancer Ewa Dziarnowska. Emotional turmoil is somatized by the body, simmering slowly, in a gaze inward that is constantly negotiated and mediated with and by the gaze outward on that body, projecting a strange intimacy between performers and audience, but with an affectionate and serene rhythm. Another type of intimacy is forged by Sepideh Khodarahmi in The Erotic Clown. In this lap dance for a cake, fast and furious, the Iranian-Swedish artist explores the boundaries between desire and repulsion, eroticism and power dynamics, humor and absurdity; frictions that today take on ever more layers and symbolism.

This fascination and questioning of what a body can provoke and reveal – no interpretations or visions are imposed, only paths are suggested – also comes from a dance in dialogue with other disciplines. Ana Rita Xavier, a young artist living in Porto, presents Fruta do Acaso, an experimental expanded cinema performance, in which the character from the short film of the same name, also by Ana Rita, jumps onto the stage in a play based on female family memories. In the case of Sancha Meca Castro – another young Portuguese creator who works at the intersection of dance and puppetry – the adaptation of the performance Sky Casting to the Sismógrafo space will be done in collaboration with singer-songwriter Inês Malheiro.

There are also moments when this dialogue is suspended. In Casino, Swedish-Chilean choreographer and performer Ofelia Jarl Ortega invites Nina Sandino from Nicaragua and Jao Moon from Colombia to cross and uncross their memories and salsa repertoires, but without music. An approach that causes suspicion at first, but which becomes ingrained as we, as spectators, allow ourselves to discover how a dance umbilically connected to music can breathe without it.

Idiosyncrasies are welcome at ℳ𝓊𝓁𝒶, and proof of this is Ssassin's Creed (Lady says Stop), by German artist Liina Magnea, who comes to us at the piano with a pistol strapped to her belt. Between choreography, theater, music, and a dramaturgy of cinematic sensors, Magnea mesmerizes with a neurotic, disturbing, frighteningly lucid and timely performance in the way she addresses, without resorting to obvious discourse, generational traumas, violent social processes, and the perversity of human behavior in power structures.

This is ℳ𝓊𝓁𝒶, or part of it. Creating a festival in 2026 may still be an inspired and inspiring gesture.

For this pilot edition, we invited Público's journalist, Mariana Duarte, to write a situated text, both in Porto and in time, in direct dialogue with the context.

Other ways of doing things
for other ways of feeling
by Mariana Duarte