Step Forward is a three-part body of work that, through time, is inscribed in Paulo Ribeiro’s choreographic language. A programme made up of two emblematic works performed by Ballet Gulbenkian – Encantados de Servi-lo (originally choreographed for and premiered by the Nederlands Dans Theater company) and Comédia Off, both performed by Portuguese Dance Company Ballet Gulbenkian in 1991 and 1996 -, which form part of the initial period of his authorial identity, and Summer’s Almost Gone, a new creation drawn from the choreographer’s relationship with the Cascais seafront promenade and which celebrates this landscape as an affective memory that extends to the present.
Encantados de Servi-lo seeks to express itself as a lyrical and dense sculpture of bodies that, through a vigorous and virtuosic vocabulary, confront, test and embrace each other, like a throbbing heartbeat.
Comédia Off is a piece of humour that follows the impulses of the genesis of the gesture and explores the silliness and the clichés of musical comedy. A decomposition of movement that plays with the interstices of what ‘show off’ means in order to turn it into ‘show in’.
Based on observations of everyday life by the choreographer and the six performers, Summer’s Almost Gone forms a light, fluttering and playful gaze at the dynamics of the sea wall that runs along the line between São João do Estoril and Cascais. A place of cosmopolitan gestures where winter can rarely be separated from summer.
Three pieces that focus on the possibilities of the body and also on its relationship with space, forging an apparent chaos where so many movements and emotions appear in continuity and from which, in the end, beauty blossoms.
