A Dance of the Forests
Uma dança das florestas





© Estelle Valente


        “I know who the Dead Ones are. They are the guests of the Human Community who are neighbors to us of the Forest. It is their Feast, the Gathering of the Tribes. Their councillors met and said, Our forefathers must be present at this Feast. They asked us for ancestors, for illustrious ancestors, and I said to FOREST HEAD, let me answer their request. And I sent two spirits of the restless dead…”



© Estelle Valente

       The Dead Man and The Dead Woman, brought back to life by the God Aroni, arrive at the Gathering of the Tribes. In a strange ritual of death, atonement, disobedience and rebirth The Dead Man and The Dead Woman confront four mortals: Rola, a prostitute who in her previous life was Madame Turtle; Adenebi, a court historian for Emperor Mata Kharibu, is now a council orator; Agboreko, was a diviner for Emperor Mata Kharibu and in this life maintains the same activity; and Demoke, a sculptor, who was once a court poet.

       They all carry wounds from another time, what precedes them is also what determines their present, they are the before and what follows, the human and the forest. All are simultaneously what they are and what they were – the dead and the living too. Like a botanical metaphor devouring the sense of the world, the more one advances in the action, the more one goes back in time.

“Then I realized it was time.
The world is time.
A dance of the forests is a world that is created in time, in a forest of sticks, with devouring eyes, gaping mouths, arms that speak, legs that fly, skies that are ground.

Weird actors made of time –
pre-history,
pre-invasion,
pillage,
independence,
freedom that has not yet arrived,
for coming
and ancestry –
compete for the places of power, death, life and (re)birth.

       They dare to be divinity, humanity, evil and the Forest. But they are always mutations of time that break boundaries.

       “Fall into the underground currents”, navigate “through the hardened crust of ancient vomit” to finally arise into the clearing of time which is a hundred generations ahead, where at the welcome of the Dead the sonic corrupts the verb, speech tears the shape and the image shows itself:

       Black. Dismembered.

       “All necks are creaking from looking up so much.” There is pain. The bodies then have to rub themselves until the blood demons swell and explode. Red.

       “Give the dead space to dance.”

       The bodies have spasms, the whole forest piles up and the Head of the Forest uncovers the ants whose hair stands on end “like scorpion tails.”

Zia Soares




© Estelle Valente


Direction, Dramaturgy Zia Soares
Text Wole Soyinka
Translation Rita Correia
Interpretation Ana Valentim, Cláudio Da Silva, Gio Lourenço, Júlio Mesquita, Matamba Joaquim, Miguel Sermão, Rita Cruz, Vera Cruz
Set, Costumes And Graphic Design Neusa Trovoada
Music Xullaji
Lighting Design Jorge Ribeiro
Assistance To Motion Direction Vânia Doutel Vaz
Consultancy Rogério De Carvalho
Video (Teasers) António Castelo
Executive Production Aoaní D’alva

Support by Batoto Yetu, Casa da Dança, Junta de Freguesia Misericórdia, Khapaz, Polo Cultural Gaivotas Boavista e KMT – Associação Moreira Team

Co-Production Teatro GRIOT and São Luiz Teatro Municipal 

Teatro GRIOT is financed by the Portuguese Government – Ministry of Culture/ Directorate-General for the Arts, and Lisbon Municipal Council; Zia Soares is an artist supported by apap – FEMINIST FUTURES, a project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union


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