MEMORIAS DE UM SABADO COM RUMORES DE AZUL

Memórias de Um Sábado com Rumores de Azul
Memories of a Saturday with Blue Whispers

1995 / 2005
10 years of the Paulo Ribeiro Company

Choreography: Paulo Ribeiro
Re-staging of works: Leonor Keil
Music: Nuno Rebelo, Vítor Rua
Costumes: Rafaela Mapril
Lighting: Nuno Meira
Text extracts of poems of António Ramos Rosa

Performers: Amélia Bentes, Leonor Keil, Marta Cerqueira, Marta Silva, Romulus Neagu, Luís Guerra, Zvonimir Kvesic

Duration of performance: 60 minutes (without intermission)

Companhia Paulo Ribeiro in Co-production with Teatro Viriato, Viseu
Other Partners Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisboa
Teatro Municipal de Faro, Faro
Faro Capital Nacional da Cultura 2005
O Espaço do Tempo, Montemor-o-Novo
Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Guimarães
Teatro Pax Júlia, Beja
Teatro Municipal da Guarda, Guarda
Teatro de Vila Real, Vila RealARTEMREDE
Teatro Nacional S. João, Porto
Support Group financed by the Ministry of Culture / Arts Institute
The company is resident at the Teatro Viriato, in Viseu
Supported by Viseu City Hall
International travel Instituto Camões
support Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian


The choreography with which Paulo Ribeiro Company has celebrated its tenth anniversary is based upon four pieces made before the company moved to Viseu. Sábado 2 speaks of vibrant sexual desire repressed by society and by the Church; Rumor de Deuses is a ritual piece that explores the connection between the body and the divine; Azul Esmeralda brings mankind closer to something that transcends it, working with fanaticism; and, finally, Memórias de Pedra speaks something with which all of the company is intimately bound up: Portugal, ‘which is a little of all of this’. The choice of these four pieces is based precisely on the themes that tie them together.

As an open critique of the prevailing mediocrity, Memórias… could not be anything other than the choreographer’s brutal manifesto against the institutions and the besuited axe-wielders of culture in Portugal. But, beyond this, Ribeiro once again creates a piece of extraordinary physical power and interlaced bodies – the way only he knows how – brilliant in the ensemble scenes, the use of props, the pervading acidity and the deceptive way he uses the softest of movements, almost necessarily, to hide another, violent one. Memórias… are further evidence of Paulo Ribeiro’s artistic intelligence. Just as the last 10 years have been.”