Vânia Doutel Vaz
violetas
- Performances
- Teatro do Bairro Alto
- ages 6+
- 60 min
Five women dance in the space between gesture, gaze, and listening.
violetas is an intimate dance piece where the dancers exist and resist. In a minimalist environment and without music, five performers inhabit the stage and its limits, treating the dancing body as both unique and sufficient. Alternating between dancers and observers, each performer takes up space through their own language, history, and subjectivity, in short solos that together form a sequential and fragmented whole.
Proposing a form of listening that goes beyond the surface, violetas plays with expectation, perception, and the projections we cast onto bodies on stage. Between margins and centres, in a space of constant displacement, violetas explores performativity as a mode of inquiry — between rigour and failure, exposure and attention, gesture and presence.
This is the first group piece by Vânia Doutel Vaz, who made her debut as a choreographer in 2023 with the solo O Elefante no Meio da Sala, presented at Alkantara Festival/Teatro do Bairro Alto.
Credits
With Lua Aurora, Lucília Raimundo, Piny, Vânia Doutel Vaz and Wura Moraes Direction and choreography Vânia Doutel Vaz Plastic gesture Sara Fonseca da Graça Light design matéria leve: Bee Barros and Ska Batista (creation), Leticia Skrycky (monitoring and mentoring), Priscila Altivo (writing about the lighting project) Creative advisor Filipa Peraltinha Dramaturgy advisor Zia Soares Costumes assistant Nina Botkay Residency collaboration André Cabral, Natacha Campos, Sara Fonseca da Graça Production Joana Costa Santos Administration Agência 25 Coproduction DDD - Festival Dias da Dança, Teatro do Bairro Alto, Alkantara Coproduction residencies Alkantara, Casa da Dança, Estúdios Victor Córdon, O Espaço do Tempo Support República Portuguesa - Cultura I DGARTES – Direção-Geral das Artes Acknowledgments Josefa Pereira
Vânia Doutel Vaz, of Angolan-Portuguese descent, trained with the Royal Academy of Dance, the National Conservatory Dance School in Portugal, and Fórum Dança. Since 2018, she has been working as a performer and rehearsal director with Trajal Harrell on Séance de Travail; the Porca Miseria trilogy (Maggie the Cat, Deathbed, O Medea); The Romeo; Tambourines; Monkey Off My Back or The Cat’s Meow; and Welcome to Asbestos Hall, created for Kunstenfestivaldesarts and Holland Festival 2025. Since 2024, she has been replaced by Legia Lewis in the solo A Plot | A Scandal....