2025SEASON⏤Onthegroundwewalkon

After a year during which we proposed to think under the motto “The world is the home of the body”, taking up ideas from the context of immigrant communities in Portugal, along with other interculturalities running through the whole season, it was now urgent to think where we should direct the various paths we had opened up and, with them, to reflect on the essence of what is passed on, that unique gesture between the one who hands on and the one who receives.

While it is true that every path brings us closer to the place we’re heading to, it is no less true that, as we move on, we stray further from our starting place. On the other hand, since those who leave aren’t always the same who arrive, the path presupposes a transmission process. Perhaps reflecting a time when we are celebrating 50 years of freedom against a growing tendency towards collective amnesia, which tendency reduces more and more the momentum of that first step, we ended 2024 with a renewed awareness of the necessity of making the past known, revisiting it and reading it anew. In this exercise of knowing and recognizing through the action of those who came before us lies a powerful driving force, capable of defending and furthering the civilizational conquests made throughout the ages.

In 1884, the ground we now stand on was home to Real Ginásio Clube Português, which remained here for about a century, before the arrival of Companhia Nacional de Bailado (the National Ballet of Portugal), which grew and established itself over three decades. In this space, a space for the practice of the body, we want to acknowledge the founding movement that preceded us in partnership with the current Ginásio Clube Português (Portuguese Gym Club) by bringing to light archive pictures of those pioneering athletes who sought physical excellence in this very place and, without realizing it, paved the way for a democratic and free access to these institutions. With that in mind, we will present each activity and idea included in our 2025 season through the distant, moving bodies of those pioneers, confirming that the determination to exceed oneself is timeless and inherent to the human condition.

The present is not an objective matter, and even less so is the past, which we perceive through written and oral transmissions. It is from this perception that we create the various narratives which shape what we think individually and collectively. And from this very subjectivity arises a need for revisiting places, events and characters that make up our historical narratives, as we see them in the light of the present.

Aiming to strengthen the collaborative spirit in creative processes, we highlight the program Young Composers in this 2025 SEASON, once again coordinated by composer Luís Tinoco, now a Pessoa Prize winner, and co-coordinated by librettist and mezzo-soprano Marcia Belamy, dramaturg Stephan Plaice, and choreographer Victor Hugo Pontes. The program will open up new possibilities for participating creators and performers, crossing over to the artistic areas of composition, writing and choreography.

Also in January, the piece Sensorianas, created by Clara Andermatt and exploring Persian culture, had its premiere as part of this year’s Other Worlds program, focused on Iran in its first edition. After it premiered at Teatro Camões in Lisbon, the piece went on to be performed in Guimarães (as part of the GUIdance – International Contemporary Dance Festival), and it has scheduled performances in Aveiro (Teatro Aveirense), Viseu (Teatro Viriato), and Loulé (Cineteatro Louletano), as part of a series of activities in schools promoted in partnership with the National Arts Plan (PNA). At the same time, Sofia Dias & Vítor Roriz, our guest artists for the At Home program, will be celebrating 20 years in activity with a program that gives prominence to the proposed theme, occupying the EVC’s studios, corridors, foyer, rooms, floors, and corners throughout the whole year.

Carlota Lagido will be back in February, with a new curatorial proposal for the cycle of Exhibitions cérebro, olhos, mãos e papel, taking place during the year at the EVC’s foyer. In this context, we will welcome projects by dance artists with a connection to the visual arts, such as Flávio Rodrigues, Miguel Bonneville, and Ana Caetano.

Throughout the year, we will once again host dance artists as part of our Artist Residencies program, as well as artists or artist collectives participating in dance festivals as part of our In Transit program. Daily and complementary practices for dance professionals will also take place over the course of the year, under Tiago Martins, in April, as part of the EVC Training program, and under Pedro Ramos and João Cardoso, in September, after the summer period, as part of the Kick-Off ’25 program.

With International Dance Day comes the Dancing the World program in partnership with Observatório do Mundo Islâmico (Islamic World Observatory), which brings us different dances practiced in social meetings. It is a space to learn about — and dance to the rhythm of — other cultures with which we have always interacted.

Now in its eighth edition, we return to the Territory program, a career launch program for young dancers from dance schools across the country. This year, we are presented with a new creation by choreographer Nadav Zelner and a new piece by choreographer Marco Goecke. As a result of the partnership between the EVC and the Nederlands Dans Theater, Territory will be entering a new cycle, featuring artistic development programs and providing young dancers with a multidisciplinary experience. In 2025, we are also launching similar programs in partnership with Companhia Nacional de Bailado, thus establishing a networking platform between renowned institutions and aspiring young artists.

On this journey of revisiting the past and seeing it through a different worldview, we host the seventh edition of Meetings for the Future in October, featuring a performative conference by Joana Craveiro, Que bem posso escusar trazer escrito em papel o que na alma andar devia, about that argonaut called Luís de Camões. This edition will be part of a cycle of activities in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Camões’ birth.

During the last trimester of 2025, we will host Words and Practices, a program about action in an artist’s gesture of passing on and reflecting. In this first edition, we welcome choreographer and dancer Marco da Silva Ferreira. Over the course of one day structured with both a practical and a theoretical component, participants will have the opportunity to experience creative processes, bringing the artistic community and the general public closer together. In partnership with the National Arts Plan (PNA), we are also launching the initiative Artist-in-Residence, bringing to public schools two choreographers who participated in the Young Composers program in 2024: Beatriz Valentim and Joana Franco.

Finally, the PALOP 25 program is organized around two main axes. The first one comprises artist residencies, training, and project development in a new collaboration with Ordem do Ó, and is aimed at dance artists from Guinea-Bissau. The second comprises meetings and project development in collaboration with artist David Marques, and is aimed at choreographers from Mozambique. With this program, we extend the series of collaborations we have had since 2020 with Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa.

Grateful to all our partners and to everyone who will join us here at the EVC throughout the year, I conclude with the same words from 2024:

We launch this season knowing that the path can shape our intentions, making it more suited to the needs of those who can benefit from it. And while it is true that not all projects will reach the point where we initially imagined them, when driven by a creative and conciliatory spirit they will certainly bring about change.

This is where we propose to meet: on the ground we walk on.

Rui Lopes Graça,

February 2025