Repeat, remember, imagine, resist

Repeat, remember, imagine, resist

Each year we repeat this exercise of writing and reflection, inviting you to join us for a new Alkantara Festival.

We like repetition. Here, and in artistic work, where it often helps transport memory and desire into the future. Repeat and remember, remember and imagine, imagine and resist.

There is music and dance on repeat in this year’s festival, from the infinite loop of the musicians that accompany La Chachi’s searching solo to the looping dance of Noha Ramadan’s ghostly guardians. Samples – snippets of existing recordings incorporated into new compositions – are layered with live samba at our opening party, and pepper the robust soundtrack that contrasts with Tiran Willemse’s nuanced movement. The repeating, doubling, and multiplying of bodies and gestures runs through the work of Sofia Dias & Vítor Roriz, Chiara Bersani’s chorus, and Vânia Doutel Vaz’s group piece.

In other works, there are more subtle patterns of repetition, of remembering and imagination. Reconnecting to a songbook or sounds from “home” opens the choreographies of Luísa Saraiva and Dorothée Munyaneza to new-old resonances. Anti-heroes Stephanie Kayal & Abed Kobeissy may be lost in space, but their sci-fi landscape is heavy with memory. In Cantar, the collective sings throughout their passage, in an attempt to avoid a recurring fate.

The space between imagination and resistance is stitched together in the handcrafted afrofuturism of Dori Nigro, or filled with the beats of reggaeton in Mario Barrantes Espinoza’s perreo. It becomes a collective space in the articulation of works by Lilly Baniwa, Ellen Pirá Wassu & Ritó Natálio, Olinda Tupinambá & Ziel Karapotó, and Juão Nyn, who with Terra Batida confront historical archives with perspectives excluded by official narratives.

Writing this invitation every year reminds us that making and witnessing live performance is a way of belonging to this time, our time. It reminds us that repetition is a gesture of inscription, a way of not forgetting. And yet ours is also a time of unthinkable repetitions: genocide, occupation, staggering violence against the Palestinian people – despite the conventions, despite our shared humanity, despite “never again”.

Remember and imagine, imagine and resist.

This November, we hope to meet you at the Alkantara Festival or on the streets in solidarity – again or for the first of many times.


Carla Nobre Sousa & David Cabecinha
(artistic directors)
Lisbon
26.09.2025