Emerging Choreographers Programme
Creation by Luís Malaquias
Premiered on 22 April 2021, in Auditório Fernando Lopes-Graça, Almada

There are themes that intersect Science and Art in terms of research. The search for an answer to the question of motivation for any human behavior is one of them. Why is it that, in a given situation, we take the decisions we make and how does this process unfold?
“Amoebas Traidoras” (Traitorous Amoebas) emerges based on the multidisciplinary approach to this issue by Robert Sapolsky, author awarded by the MacArthur Foundation, and Professor of Biology and Neurology at Stanford University.

In a piece for two performers, Luís Malaquias seeks to materialize Sapolsky's words in the bodies of the dancers, in an attempt to understand the reasons behind some of the most fracturing and devastating behaviors that human beings are capable of. It focuses briefly on four themes that structure community life: Culture, Evolution, Cooperation and “We/They” Dichotomy or Demarcation.

Creation: Luís Malaquias
Co-creation and Performance: Bruno Duarte e Luís Malaquias
Text: extract from “Behavior” by Robert Sapolsky
Music: Daniel Martinho
Light design: Stageplot
Assistant choreographer and répétiteur: Maria João Lopes
Acknowledgments: Ana Lázaro and Mateus Gomes

Luís Malaquias started his training in Leiria, at the Annarella Academia de Ballet e Dança and at the Clube Académico de Leiria. Graduated from the Escola Superior de Dança, from I.P. de Lisboa in 2012 and, since then, worked as a dancer with the choreographers Benvindo Fonseca, Daniel Cardoso, Carla Jordão, Ricardo Ambrósio, Bruno Duarte, Nuno Gomes, Margarida Belo Costa, Elson Ferreira, São Castro and António Cabrita, Luís Marrafa, Julia Ehrstrand, among others, as a freelancer, at Quorum Ballet - Companhia de Dança Contemporânea and at Companhia de Dança de Almada (Ca.DA). He choreographed the pieces "A Invenção da Resposta", with Bruno Duarte, and "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche: #publicperception" for the Companhia de Dança de Almada. In this context he had the opportunity to dance on multiple stages in continental Portugal, Madeira, Poland, Croatia, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Romania, Holland, Luxembourg, Brazil and China. He regularly taught contemporary dance between 2010 and 2018 at Annarella - Academia de Ballet e Dança; Arabesque - Dance Academy and Quorum Academy. He taught, in the same period and on the same theme or as a guest choreographer, workshops in several schools in the Lisbon area, including the Escola Superior de Dança, the Centro de Artes de Marvila and the Almadança school. In 2018, he developed a video dance project at Ca.DA, that gaving rise to the films "The Art of Losing" by director Cristina Ferreira Gomes about the homonymous play by São Castro, and "Sete Dias de Inverno", by director Henrique Câmara Pina, on the play "Inverno", by Bruno Duarte. Currently he is a dancer of the fixed cast of Ca.DA and a third year student in Osteopathy at the Escola Superior de Saúde Ribeiro Sanches, I.P. da Lusofonia.

Tour

LINOTIP – Centru Independent Coregrafic, Bucharest - Romania, September 8, 2023
HaParsa Center for Performing Arts (MASH), Jerusalem - Israel, December 7, 2022
Barnes Crossing, Cologne - Germany, May 22, 2022
Auditório Osvaldo Azinheira – Academia Almadense, Almada - Portugal, October 1, 2021

24' | ages 12 and above