Bruno Brandolino in residence at Espaço Alkantara

Se o profundo estivesse na superfície [If the Deep Were on the Surface] is a speculative choreographic fiction that follows the encounter between a human community and an unknown life form. Its presence gradually reconfigures the group’s social organization and mutual perception, affecting them at a psychophysical level through the distortion of the senses, physiology, and language.

As time passes, the group faces a series of dilemmas: What is at stake when humanity encounters an intelligent life form that governs it? Should they adapt or resist? What happens when positions diverge and those who were once similar become strangers? And, if the transformation is irreversible, what will remain of their humanity?

Combining theatricality, choreography, and experimental music, the piece traces this community's journey at the intersection of speculative literature and contemporary global concerns. It critically examines how human reactivity manifests in times of crisis, revealing the fragility of our ideas of community and identity.

Equally, the work seeks to explore the adaptive potential of human nature, proposing modes of social reorganization: questioning speciesist hierarchies, fabulating interspecies forms of reproduction and sexuality, expanding the idea of family through multiple kinship ties, and imagining forms of communication beyond verbal language. Allegorically, it aims to reflect on central issues affecting current sociopolitical coexistence, such as the rise of purist identity discourses, hate campaigns, and violence directed at ethnic, sexual, or migrant minorities, as well as the difficulty of imagining futures that do not entail the destruction of the environment and the human species itself.

Se o profundo estivesse na superfície invites the audience to follow and mirror these profound shifts in perception, physiology, and language, immersing themselves in a new territory where familiar paradigms collapse. In a fiction that disrupts the meaning of being human, the piece opens up radical perspectives to rethink our futures through a critical dystopia.


Presentations

2026
9 October — Open process / Work-in-progress sharing — Graner (Barcelona, ES)
13 and 14 November — Premiere at ET Festival do Espaço do Tempo (Montemor-o-Novo, PT)

2027
April — Performances at DDD - Festival Dias da Dança (Porto, PT)

Credits

Choreography Bruno Brandolino Performance and co-creation Bibi Dória, Connor Scott, Eslam Elnebishy, Sepideh Khodarahmi Lighting and spatial design Santiago Rodriguez Tricot Sound design Mariana Carvalho Costume design Nina Botkay Dramaturgy Romain Beltrão Teule Executive production Joana Costa Santos Production NADA – Associação Cultural (PT) Co-production residency Graner (ES), Campus – Paulo Cunha e Silva (PT), Piscina (PT), Alkantara (PT), Estúdios Victor Cordon (PT) Co-production O Espaço do Tempo (PT), Festival Dias da Dança (PT) Support European Union, implemented by the Goethe-Institut

This project is supported by the Common Stories EU network