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This work thrives on the repression of sexual energy and its confrontation with the romantic and religious fantasy that only finds “redemption” in a kind of sacrifice, of self-mutilation.
It’s a work that has an erotic charge very similar to what we, or at least I, experienced, in our Catholic past, full of Our Lady of Fatima and half-orgasmic, half-redemptive hells.
Sábado 2 is an essentially selfish piece of work; the other exists to emphasise our fantasies; we sympathise by thinking that we suffer from love, but it’s nothing more than imagination and social convention. That’s where the text comes in, to emphasise the stereotype of social conventions, the banality of words and even feelings, which are almost always fleeting and virtual.
To summarise, in this play I’ve tried to explore the empty whirlpool of the individual who is essentially turned in on himself, taking the connection with the divine as a kind of redemptive energy.

Paulo Ribeiro

Performance Career:

1997
Pau (France) – Thêátre Saragosse
Dijon (France) – Art Danse Bourgogne

1996
Porto – Teatro Nacional S. João
Neuchatel (Switzerland) – Festival Neuchatel
London (UK) – The Turning World, The Place Theatre
Sheffield (UK) – Sheffield Plays at Home
Budapest (Hungary) – Petofi Hall
Berlin (Germany) – Tanzwerkstatt
New York (USA) – St. Marks Church
Providence (USA) – The Carriage House
Paris (France) – Festival Ile de Danses

1995
Lisboa – Teatro Municipal de São Luís
Guarda – Auditório Municipal da Guarda
Lisboa – Teatro CineArte
Loures – Espaço Artivários
Montemor-o-Velho- Festival Citemor
Braga – Teatro Circo
Coimbra – Teatro Gil Vicente
Viseu – Parque do Fontelo
Porto – Balleteatro Auditório
Lisboa – Festival Danças na Cidade / Centro Cultural de Belém (co-producer) – 2 June (premiere)

The mirror of a metaphysical celebration in which the body is the quintessential means of communication, Rumor de Deuses explores a physicality that is subtle, but at the same time exuberant in terms of both the inner feeling and the external image. In this choreography, Paulo Ribeiro acknowledges a strange freedom of the soul.
A more contemplative work that enabled the choreographer to move forward in the exploration of new movement vocabulary and of new situations in which humour is built.

Based on Wassily Kandinsky’s definition of the colours blue (azul)—a movement “of retreat from the spectator” and at the same time “of turning in upon its own centre”—and emerald (esmeralda)—“ambivalent, whose qualities might suggest occult and damned sciences, but also clairvoyance, fertility and immortality”—, and on the contradiction between colour and meaning, Paulo Ribeiro creates a performance about the dynamics of violence, banality and futility, starting with the example of the beastly human being, laid bare for his inability to manage contradictions.
Azul Esmeralda is an excessive work that turns into an unbridled celebration of stupidity, violence without a set purpose and the insatiable futility of joy.

Memórias de Pedra/Tempo Caído inaugurated the life of the Paulo Ribeiro Company as a resident structure at Teatro Viriato, in Viseu. It was the first work that made its artistic and production relevance clear. A symbol of the decentralisation of contemporary dance, arts and culture that crosses the creation of Teatro Viriato’s current artistic project. In this piece, choreographer Paulo Ribeiro reflects upon the Portuguese imaginary and what he considered to be one of the strongholds of national identity: the stones of the houses, where all that’s left of our greatness is registered.

Performance career:

1998
Premiere 3 de julho – Festival Mergulho no Futuro / Expo’98 (co-producer)
São Paulo (Brazil): Centro Cultural de São Paulo
Stockholm (Sweden): Dansen Hus (co-producer)
Frankfurt (Germany): Kunstlerhaus Mousonturm

2000
Beja: Auditório do Instituto Politécnico
Coimbra: Teatro Académico Gil Vicente
Aveiro: Estaleiro Teatral
Braga: Auditório do Parque de Exposições
Berlin (Germany): Hebbel Theatre1999
Tondela: Teatro Acert
Évora: Teatro Garcia de Resende
Estarreja: ESTA ‘99
Dortmund (Germany): AKKU, St. Reinoldi Kirche
Dusseldorf (Germany): Tanzhaus nrw Die Werkstatt
Bonn (Germany): Brotfabrik
Viseu: Teatro Viriato
Trento (Italy): Semana da Cultura Portuguesa
Glasgow (Scotland): Festival New Territories
Porto: Teatro Rivoli
Coimbra: Teatro Gil Vicente

This is a live encounter, this is the pleasure of musicality, this is letting the body be epidermis, this is breathing through the skin, this is making space for dialogue, this is giving substance to the surprise, this is going on stage transparently, this is forgetting about oneself, this is giving the body a voice, this is giving the voice a body, this is listening and dancing, dancing.
Revisiting Maria João and Mário Laginha’s particular and autonomous universe, returning to the origins, and trying to materialise the building of a new landscape through the maximum exploration of the bodies.
The improvisation space allows for an interesting encounter between that which is known and that which is unknown, turning this event into an ongoing live (Ao Vivo) performance.

Performance career

1999
Porto: 5 December (premiere) – Teatro Nacional São João (co-producer)

2000
Loures: Jardim de Loures
Coimbra: Jardim da Sereia
Viseu: Teatro Viriato

2001
San Francisco (USA): Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts
Miami (USA): Miami Light Project
Lisboa: Grande Auditório do Centro Cultural de Belém

The musical comedy is the cult of life in constant spring. A nonconformist luxury that seeks to communicate with everyone and with each one in particular. The energetic conjunction that manages to create the indefinable, capable of setting off the dream.
Carmen Miranda and Josephine Baker have in common a talent that feeds on humanity, a wild authenticity which is life itself. It is from these two phenomena of the show that the choreographer seeks to create oneiric matter, to build a celebration marked by the tireless need to be present and, at the same time, to reflect and give shape to the small intimacies, giving them doubt, despair, emptiness and sadness that feed and give dimension to the reason to be on stage.

Tristes Europeus – jouissez sans entraves is an encounter between several people from different Europes in Viseu. They all brought along different stories, specific pasts, realities and expectations that were restated or dissolved in exile. They all use their bodies to express themselves, they all breathe through their skin and dream of dissolving into universal beings capable of grasping and understanding everything.
However, they all suffer from claustrophobia and chronic asthma. The only way to relieve such suffering of not being well anywhere is to be able to forget about oneself.
This encounter is a celebration of memory, of which only the restless body can keep a record. A body that remembers, a body that forgets, a body that feels and gives the feeling that outside of it nothing makes sense.

Performance career:

2002
Famalicão: Casa das Artes de Famalicão
Porto: Teatro Nacional S. João
Braga: Auditório do Conservatório de Braga
Castelo Branco: Teatro Avenida
Lisbon: Centro Cultural de Belém (Grande Auditório)
Dusseldorf (Germany): Tanzhaus
Coimbra: Teatro Gil Vicente
Stuttgart (Germany): Treffpunkt Rotebuheplatz
Montemor-o-Novo: CineTeatro Curvo Semedo
Guimarães: Auditório da Universidade do Minho
Glasgow (Scotland): Festival New Territories
Bourges (France): Maison de la Culture de Bourges (co-producer)

2001
Viseu: 13 December (premiere) – Teatro Viriato

In Silicone Não, the word appears as an order to dance. Six bodies, matters of tension, seek to translate word into gesture as eternal living creatures in a chaos of affections and life.

“Reality and the way dance perceives it have been an obsession for me. Like an attempt to find true meaning in what I do. A kind of need to be useful, to start from a common place and make it unique. The material that justifies creation must be dense. It must act as a challenge that leads us to think in multiple ways. Thus, from the anonymous, we can create particularities. For this new creation I challenged Jacinto Lucas Pires, a Portuguese playwright with a unique style, to write a short story about chaos. The only rule is that this chaos must be a material of affection, of life, impregnated with realities. In addition to the performers, who will be the material for all the writing, there will be the dramatic guidance of Ricardo Pais in the action of the words, and Fabio Iaquone, a video director fascinated by the illusion of images. Together, we’ll be able to draw us into universes that we wish were real.“

Paulo Ribeiro

—–

Performances career:

2004
Glasgow (Scotland): Festival New Territories

2003
Almada: Festival de Almada
Coimbra: Teatro Gil Vicente / Coimbra 2003 (co-producer)
Porto: Teatro Nacional S. João (co-producer)
Montemor-o-Novo: Teatro Curvo Semedo
Lisbon: Teatro Nacional D. Maria II (co-producer)
Viseu: 29 de abril (premiere) – Teatro Viriato (co-producer)

Based on texts by Gonçalo M. Tavares, and with music by Bernardo Sassetti, Gilbert Bécaud and Travadinha, Malgré nous, nous étions là is a duet performed by Paulo Ribeiro and Leonor Keil that reflects upon the issues of intimacy and complicity.

Four men star in Masculine, an intense, almost feverish, play capable of making the public laugh or cry, and which revolves around the “persona” of Fernando Pessoa.  The poet’s words eco throughout the play.  It is a well-told story in which speech is disputed by the performers, who bring us life episodes that come across the Pessoa imaginary, in a turbulence of expressions that lead the public through a roller coaster, with all the senses and beauty of the moments and energy that the play transpires.

Nota de intenções

At what point lies the friction that unchains the sublime?
What presupposition incarnates the essential movement?
In what way, slaves of time, can we perpetuate it?
How can reclusion originate its opposition and the clear-sighted routine?
There are issues that always follow us, there are people that are always present, doubts that shouldn’t be clarified, they are the reasons to be attentive. No answers needed. What we need is charm, we need to practice simplicity to attain the fascination of multiplicity.
We venture, determined in utopia as a secret of life, we let chaos delight itself without appealing to noise.
We will move towards the great person of Pessoa, because as him, we will walk the same stones unresigned for still being here!

Paulo Ribeiro

“Why am I so unhappy? Because I am what I must not be. Because half of me is not brother to the other half, & the conquest of one is the defeat of the other.”
Fernando Pessoa

Five women and Fernando Pessoa. A female Pessoa in high heels. The words of the poet challenge the words of the women, who let themselves get lost by their own narratives. The poetry of female movement crosses the piece, mixed with the passion invested in each gesture. In this universe of Pessoa, they’re concerned about their hair, use high heels, despise men and dance with bodies that exude sensuality.
The movement is restrained, smooth and flows into extended pleasure. This place of sensations is only interrupted by the choreographer’s higher power of playing with his creations, of making them laugh at themselves.

Performance career:

2009
January 18th – Teatro José Lúcio de Silva, Leiria
January 31st – Teatro Aveirense, Aveiro
February 7th – Teatro Municipal de Bragança
February 14th – Teatro Municipal de Faro
February 28th – Festival New Territories – Tramway, Glasgow / Scotland
April 2nd – Teatro Rosalia de Castro, La Coruña / Spain
April 8th – Teatro Viriato, Viseu
April 25th – Oficina de Teatro, Coimbra

2008
September 5th and 6th (premiere) – Teatro Nacional São João, Porto
September 14th – Festival “Le Temps d’Aimer”, Biarritz / France
October 10th and 11th – Teatro Viriato, Viseu
October 25th – Teatro Municipal de Almada
November 8th – Teatro Municipal da Guarda
November 20th – Teatro Jofre, Ferrol / Galiza
November 22nd and 23rd – Grande Auditório do Edifício Sede da CGD / Culturgest, Lisbon
November 29th – Teatro Virgínia, Torres Novas
December 6th – Teatro Ribeiro da Conceição, Lamego
December 13th – Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Guimarães
December 20th – Auditório de Galícia, Santiago de Compostela / Galiza

In Maiorca, at the invitation of Jorge Salavisa, Paulo Ribeiro choreographs based on Chopin’s Preludes, performed by Pedro Burmester, urging the audience to let themselves be carried away without claiming rationality, which is so often limiting. The choreographer returns to the essence of creating a piece to the scale of the music. It is not the movement that counts, rather its genesis. Just as Chopin spoke in favour of the precedence of form to the detriment of the soul.

*This show was part of the celebrations of the bicentenary of the birth of Frédéric Chopin.

Eight cities inspired the performers to create short solos that mirror a focused, yet deliberately superficial, or touristic if you prefer, view. In Paisagens…onde o negro é cor, choreographer Paulo Ribeiro builds express dedications, anchored in something that every city had in common and that proved to be the most beautiful surprise of this journey through Portugal: the human quality of the encounters. Paisagens… onde o negro é cor is a danced cartography on the identity and sentimental geography of these eight Portuguese locations.

Seduced by Jim Morrisson’s poetical strength, one of the most irreverent icons of the 60s, and by its posthumous release An American Prayer, the choreographer Paulo Ribeiro let himself lead by the words and spirituality of the musician to make a reflection on the role of each individual in its relationship with the world and the role of dance.

Loyal to Jim Morrisson’s universe, but free on his rescue of an inner self in eminent danger, has built a play grounded in the need of each individual to rethink himself as a collective being and to have time to listen to himself. Embedded on the will of tear out and transform, the play is inhabited by constructed and deconstructed sensations orbiting an epoch, a politic, an abandonment, a concern, but also something festive and of a vigorous humanity.
Morrisson’s accomplice, but emancipated on the game of bodies, Paulo Ribeiro opposes what it is called the interior annihilation, feed by the ghost of a world’s unsustainability; provokes the collective apology and sow some benevolent accidents, made to shake the spectators perception, just in the style of its organic and active kind of dance.

Tour:

2012
Centro Cultural de Vila Flor, Guimarães – 12 to 24 Nov (residency and premiere)
Teatro Viriato, Viseu – 30 Nov and 1 Dec

2013
Teatro Nacional São João, Porto – 18 to 20 Jan
São Luiz Teatro Municipal, Lisboa – 1 to 3 Feb

Sem um tu não pode haver um eu (“With no you, no I”) so begins Ingmar Bergman’s autobiography The Magic Lantern, the same filmmaker whose work has inspired this solo both created and danced by Paulo Ribeiro. “Bergman crosses my path at a time when I consider we must look into our happiness, regardless of its shape. Even though we are being drowned in numbers and realities that do not belong to us, humanity must persist.” the choreographer, now returning to stage after “JIM”, remarks.
In this piece, to the tune of Robert Wyatt’s Insensitive, there is the dance of a heart that is all raw, all flesh. A me that wants to conjugate the second person singular, like who says “I am you, also you”, rather than “I am yours”. There is more surrender than possession. Among slow and clean gestures, shaky, crumbling steps and seismic movement, Paulo Ribeiro draws a map of affection. The choreographer transforms into a seismograph that measures quakes of emotion. In this piece there is love, hatred, solitude, anxiety, marital dilemmas, interior struggle, collapsing, hands and hands. And there is turmoil. A body, that in all its vitality plays chess with death. Finally, an illuminating catharsis. The cry that breaks out, like the dew at daybreak.

It’s a piece that, in an unpretentious way and with some humour, tackles the necessity of rationalising dance, giving it space to exist on its own, conveying a vital and poetic energy in which the deep meaning of the choreography lies in what is not said but felt…

It premiered on December 5th 2014 at the Rivoli Municipal Theatre in Porto.

Paulo Ribeiro’ Company is celebrating twenty years of existence and in each one there is one or more creations. In this path there is a perpetual movement of exploration of the space, ideas, concepts, doubts, meetings, mismatches, surprises, which is a choreography that sums up all the others in an open space that is delimited by the interior; a dip in the depth of himself with the will to find the best that we can offer to those who decide to share this adventure with us. As Bergman says, “with no you, no I” and this is the beauty of all relation- ships, especially the relationship between the author and the audience.
The creative process is almost always distressing but also festive. Inevitably we celebrate all of our physical and mental possibilities so there is always a delivery beyond us, surprises and celebration!!!!! There is always a dimension of rituals that transforms us, gives us life, changes us and brings us closer to each other.
This is my celebration. I want to celebrate to give body to the inner and secret motivations, give substance to the utopia, the expectation, the desire to create a platform of understanding and complicity, not only for the enclosed area of the stage but also extended to everybody that is present, whether passive or active.
Because celebration is for all dimensions…
Celebration is already a multiple polyhedral of emotions caused by the relation- ship with nature, with each other and with the immanent forces enjoyed in the externalized joy of its own evocation. One is many; many are one!
It is always avoidance of everyday life, transgressional carnival, bad face(s) that hide characters of conventional routines but always body and soul, explosive screaming of joy and freedom.
So, celebration can be everything as long as it is a manifestation of pleasure. Even a simple tenderness is a celebration…

Paulo Ribeiro and João Luís Oliva

Note of intentions
We are not illustrating a film. We dialogue with images, images with a past but an uncertain future.
Images that are inhabited by people, by experiences, by suspended stories…
Images that move towards the duet of the apple and the egg which, in turn, suggests the elevation of love.
Love… An image between the time that drags itself round and round and the duet that, wanting to fly so much, ties itself to the ground.
Love that becomes possessive, demanding, dependent, desperate, exalted, suffocating; but also pathetic, comic, tragic-comic, playful, frivolous, virtuous, sinuous, cabotine and empty.
Love that slips into the ghosts of the blackness of the soul and hyperactivity as a way of exorcising illusion or disillusionment!…
Without closed narratives, without overwhelming dramaturgy, without the obligation to understand everything, we embark on a world of meanings that are those of life in its simplest configuration. At the same time, and indelibly, we summon Magritte to accompany us.

Paulo Ribeiro

Avant premiere – 22nd April 2016, Teatro Viriato, Viseu

A walk with Jiří Kylián. This is how Paulo Ribeiro presents his new creation, which is a tribute to a choreographer who inhales the present and exhales timelessness, someone who carries a divine hand. A choreographer who is a major reference to Paulo Ribeiro, with whom he intensely wishes to communicate, share and walk. In Walking with Kylián. Never Stop Searching, we come closer to Jiří Kylián and what lies behind his works, to reflect on the diversity of his choreographic languages and the difference between them, but also on the effectiveness of language and thought in the act of creation.

———-

Note of intentions

Why do we dance? Why do we keep on dancing and choreographing? Why do we believe that this art can grow to become even bigger?
Why does human ‘supernaturality’ reveal itself through dance? Why are there choreographers that can manifest that same revelation with crucial undeniable certainty?
Why has dance an increasing need of words? Why did dance resurface today with overwhelming strength and reinvented itself without boundaries? Why is it that the ultimate limitation of the body is not having any limits at all? The more ethereal it is, the more rooted to the ground it becomes! The more spiritual it is, the more corporeal it becomes!
There are some choreographers that have always lived on the edge of time, that have always breathed in the present and exhaled timelessness. In France, when we refer to someone we admire quite a lot, we call them ‘Dieu sur la terre’ (God on Earth). And, as a matter of fact, I believe there are some artists, in this particular case, choreographers, that carry, or indeed possess, a divine touch. Choreographers that are paramount references for me and with whom I want to intensely share, communicate and walk with.
The first walk… I will take it with Jiří Kylián, the same that accompanied me through a large part of my career. I know him well artistically and a bit personally. We have entirely distinct idioms, but it’s that exact difference that interests me. I want to come nearer to the person behind the work. I want to look at the piece and feel the connections to his original idea. I want to feel the happiness and frustration of those who, in my mind, never fail when creating. I want to understand the efficacy of of their language and thought. From this walk, which will certainly turn into many, a choreography will be born – the end result of my observations on his way of living dance. I think it will be a dance of liberating compromise, a much more universal, much different dance from all the others I have created.
A choreography for six performers and the hand of God…

Paulo Ribeiro

Tour:

2019
Teatro Aveirense, Aveiro – 30 March
Centro de Arte de Ovar – 14 June

2018
Le Théâtre du Merlan, Scène Nationale de Marseille, França – 2 February
Teatro Municipal São Luiz, Lisboa – 6 e 17 February
Teatro Académico Gil Vicente, Coimbra – 4 April
Teatro Nacional São João, Porto – 14, 15 e 16 June
Teatro Municipal de Bragança – 8 September
Teatro Municipal de Vila Real – 15 September
Teatro Garcia de Resende, Évora – 4 November

2017
Teatro Viriato, Viseu – 17 e 18 November (premiere)
Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Guimarães –  25 November

Memórias de Pedra. Tempo Caído premiered in 1999, and it dwelled on the identity of the country’s hinterland. At the invitation of the municipality of Viseu, the piece that inaugurated the life of the Paulo Ribeiro Company as a resident structure in Viseu returned to the stages twenty years after its premiere, to build a portrait of Portugal that is seemingly frozen in time, but open to Europe and to the changes that marked the end of the 20th century.

27 years ago, Paulo Ribeiro created his company’s first piece: Sábado 2. The world promised to open itself, Europe strengthened a common project, and Portugal was committed to becoming greater. Between Saturday and Monday, a weekend and a quarter of a century went by. It was beautiful, it was intense, and above all it enabled dreams to come true. Segunda 2 seems to be the logical follow-up to a project that is necessarily authorial and that stems from the imperative to return to an alleged normalcy. We are back and greatly willing to be once again together, to celebrate life, to rediscover partying.

Note of intentions
It’s a choreography that challenges itself, that places itself on the brink of failure, always as an ally and not an adversary. It’s a piece that summons up memories of so many others and that, in its secret paths, is inspired by much of what the times have given us. We don’t look at failure as an obstruction, just as we don’t look at all the broken dreams, the obstacles that insist on being a condition of life, the cultural dynamics that are so often inconclusive, the vain attempts to fix and build.
Dance is still in a confined place, but that doesn’t matter to us. Next Monday everything will change. If not the next one, then the next one, and for that to happen, we’ll keep challenging ourselves, playing, provoking and exorcising the failure. Let’s be singular and collective. Let’s rediscover the party. Let’s find our bodies again. Let’s keep dancing.

Paulo Ribeiro

Performance tour

2022
5 February – Teatro Municipal da Covilhã
19 February – Teatro Municipal de Ourém
13 March – Teatro José Lúcio da Silva
30 March – Teatro Municipal de Vila Real
14 and 15 April – Teatro Nacional São João, Porto

2021
15 October – Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Guimarães
29 and 30 October – Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisboa
5 November – Cine-Teatro Louletano, Loulé
19 and 20 November – Teatro Viriato, Viseu

The mirror of a celebration in which the body is the quintessential means of communication, Rumor de Deuses explores a physicality that is subtle, but at the same time exuberant in terms of both the inner feeling and the external image. This is a more contemplative work that acknowledges a strange freedom of the soul.

Rumor de Deuses premiered in 1996, it was the second and most awarded creation by Paulo Ribeiro for his company, and it was restaged in late 2022.