At the invitation of the Inatel Foundation, choreographer Filipa Francisco returns to folk dances and ethnography to pose multiple questions in a new journey between traditional and contemporary dance.

With more than eight decades of history, the Inatel Foundation has a vigorously established trajectory in the areas of tradition, pop and popular cultures, of expressive and immaterial heritage. In search of deeply rooted living heritage, it develops projects and partnerships that aim to show new visions of objects and practices of yore, deconstructing images and creating new approaches.

Thus, RODA was born, resulting from research on the dances currently existing in Lisbon and the way they reflect migrations between rural and urban realities, their relationship with the political environment over time and what they bring us as urgency, among other aspects. The investigation process started by meeting with people with different practical and theoretical knowledge of traditional and contemporary dance, such as David Marques, Domingo Morais, Fábio Gonçalves Luís (Rancho Folclórico Ribeira de Celavisa), Joaquim Pinto (Grupo Etnográfico Danças e Cantares do Minho), Ludgero Mendes and Paulo Lima. Simultaneously, the work was accompanied by readings, discussions and reflections of various written, visual and audio materials.

The cast mixes professional and non-professional artists from different areas and provenances, with 8 performers: 4 contemporary dancer and 4 folk dancers from Rancho Folclórico da Casa do Concelho de Castro Daire. The original score is composed and performed on stage by Live Low with the participation of 2 musicians from Rancho Folclórico da Ribeira de Celavisa and 2 from Rancho Folclórico da Casa do Concelho de Castro Daire.

From the very first rehearsal of RODA, we wanted the whole group to work body and reasoning through instigating issues: What does a Circle represent to you? What does it mean to walk? Which dances are lodged in your body? What is a folk dance? And a contemporary dance? Are we open to desecration?

“RODA works on another way of being, faces the fear of confronting bodies and cultures, lets itself go through an organic space-time, searching for a ground in 2023 to experiment a new folklore, alive and pulsating. An open folk dance yet to come, a dance of the present because it is the future, composed in an act of desecration built on foundations borne in respect and admiration for the other. An act that seeks to unlock meetings and celebrations emerging from multiple traditional dances.”

“Bodies and movement that experiment and deconstruct continuously, bringing other times and other cultures to RODA, where they have been all along. Dancing on a circle we question the strict roles and standards of Portuguese folklore, imposed by a dictatorship that insists on clinging to our bodies and actions. (…) RODA widens and rehearses a collective statement in the square, the public space of our lives. It integrates the beauty and intensity of the ritual of summoning plurality and ancestry. Desecrate to evolve. Traditional and contemporary dance in tense and dialoguing bodies that expand in mutual contamination.” (Hugo Cruz)