PATRÍCIA PORTELA

"Por amor!” [Out of love!] is a monologue about the other when it comes to love. The one we love, the one we await, the one who abandons us, the one we desire, the one we ignore or who ignores us, who takes care of us and of whom we take care. The scenery resembles an animated film based on paintings by Frida Kahlo or Tintoretto. The performance starts as an ode to the most tragic love stories in the history of literature, and ends joyously as a disco matinee. We will celebrate a parade of lost or happy loves among couples, friends and relatives silently, weeping, via SMS, and confessing in the dark. From Romeo to Rita Lee, from Camilo to Bovary. Could it be better to last than to burn? Convening Ovid, Adília Lopes, Shakespeare and O’Neill, among others who dedicated themselves to the art of describing the ridicule, and wearing kimonos, leather or rare silks, Patrícia Portela, Leonor Barata and Sónia Baptista, each alone on stage, will address the vulnerability, frailty and stupidity, but also the beauty of being in love: with others, with someone else and with other lives, things and parts of the world. With what we don’t know. With what challenges us. With what we don’t know why.

Patrícia Portela lives between Portugal and Belgium. She studied set design, film, dance and philosophy in Lisbon, Utrecht, London, Denmark, Helsinki and Leuven. Aside from her literary works, she creates performances and cross-disciplinary installations, and has been regularly on tour throughout Europe and the world since 2003, collecting several awards for her work (of which she highlights the 1994 New Talent Award given by the Portuguese Association of Theatre Critics, the Madalena de Azeredo Perdigão/Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Award for “Flatland I”, or the Theatre in the Decade Award for “T5”). She’s currently dedicated to the study of invisibility.

Leonor Barata has a degree in philosophy and a postgraduate degree inartistic studies both from the University of Coimbra. Her dance training was at Forum Dança, where she studied under Howard Sonenklar, Francisco Camacho, Madalena Vitorino, André Lepecki and Thierry Baë, among others. She performed in several dance and theatre performances, of which she highlights: “Miss Liberty”, by Mónica Lapa; “Duel”, with Tof Théâtre; “Visitas Dançadas”, at Grão Vasco Museum (by Aurélie Gandit); and more recently “Revisitar”, in collaboration with Patrícia Portela.

Sónia Baptista studied contemporary dance at Forum Dança. In 2001, she was granted the Ribeiro da Fonte Dance New Talent Award by the Ministry of Culture for “Haikus”, her first work. She explores and experiments with dance, performance, music, literature, theatre and video. Aside from texts and poems released in several publications, she published 4 books.