Created by Bruno Duarte
Premiere date and location to be announced
“fenda” (crack) investigates, through cine-choreographic language, the life and legacy of Valentim de Barros (1916–1986), a pioneer of Portuguese dance whose international career was abruptly interrupted by the repression of the Estado Novo regime and punitive psychiatry.
This video dance creation aims to reflect on the tension between surveillance and freedom, erasure and resistance, taking as its symbolic center the story of Valentim and his indestructible creative capacity, even during almost half a century of hospitalization.
The objective is not to biographically reconstruct Valentim's life, but to explore how the contemporary body can respond to forced silence, the marginalization of queer identity, and the historical erasure of persecuted artists.
Bruno Duarte is a PhD student in Contemporary Art at the Universidade de Coimbra, has a Master Degree in Dance Teaching and a degree in Dance from Escola Superior de Dança (ESD) in Lisbon. He was a dancer and performer in Grupo Experimental de Dança (2011/2) and Quorum Ballet (2013). Since 2013, he has been a member of Companhia de Dança de Almada. He was co-producer and performer in the "P48" video dance (2012), presented at the 20th Quinzena de Dança de Almada, and "5" (2013), presented at the Caldas Late Night (Portugal), L'art difficile de filmer la danse (Belgium) and InShadow (Portugal) festivals, the latter winning the award for best videodance in competition - audience choice. As a creator, he presented "Metamorphosis" (2011/2), for Culturgest in partnership with ESD, "someone else ago" (2013), for Centro Cultural de Belém’s BOXNOVA programme, "L'Veltro" (2016), in co-production with Elson Marlon Ferreira, “Blömma” (2021) for Estufa, and for Companhia de Dança de Almada, "Riot" (2014), "Gaveston" (2016), "Fobos" (2017), “A Invenção da Resposta” (2018), in co-creation with Luís Malaquias, “SubRosa” (2018), “Inverno” (2019), “Noir” and “A Quiet Moment” (2020), and “Carbono” (2022). In this company, he is also the author of the Itinerant Choreographic Laboratory project, for which he created "Dentro do Abraço" (2016) and "SCENA" (2022). He’s participated in workshops and seminars by Mikael Fau and Pauline Journé (France), João da Silva (Brazil), Siri Dybwik (Norway), Jack Gallagher (USA) and David Zambrano (Venezuela), amongst others. As a choreographer/dance teacher he integrated the European projects CLASH! (2019/21) and Up2DANCE (2020/21). He has taught workshops at venues such as the Beijing Dance Theater (China), Giro8 Companhia de Dança (Brazil), FreeDance (Croatia), DNA (Portugal), amongst others. He’s been a guest teacher at Escola Superior de Dança (2016 and 2019), a teacher at Ca.DA Escola, and a guest choreographer in the Projecto Quorum. He was distinguished with the Almada Artes - Young Talent award, in the “Jovens Talentos 2019” contest, promoted by Almada’s Municipality.
