The Mirror in Portugal
The Mirror in Portugal
On the 21th and 22nd of May Introdans will travel to Portugal. The Mirror by choreographer Fernando Melo will be part of the programme of the Imaginarius festival in Santa Maria da Feira, Portugal.
About the performance
The Mirror explores the idea of reflection and perspective. Two dancers stand facing each other, performing movements that appear mirrored — although no actual mirror is present on stage. Does the mirror exist between them, or does it emerge from the way we look at them? The piece plays with this question by subtly distorting the image and shifting our perception of movement.
In The Mirror, the interplay between the dancers and the scenography creates a new way of looking at the body in space. The choreography challenges our sense of gravity and plays with shifting perspectives: movements can appear slower, heavier, or slightly unreal. The dancers reach out to one another, searching for connection, yet seem repeatedly pulled apart by an invisible force. What emerges is a simple but powerful image of human relationships — the longing for connection, and the distance that sometimes remains.
About Fernando Melo
Fernando Melo (Brazil, 1974) is an internationally renowned choreographer and director, known for his visually layered and often interdisciplinary work. He trained as a dancer in São Paulo before continuing his career in Europe, including with Göteborgs Operans Danskompani, where he later worked as house choreographer. Melo is known for his inventive use of spatial structures and scenography, through which he creates dialogues between dancers, objects, technology and illusion. His poetic and playful choreographies have been performed worldwide, including in Sweden, Germany, Canada and the Netherlands. Recurring themes in his work include the relationship between the human body and space, and the ways in which limitations can inspire new forms of movement and imagination. With his distinctive artistic signature, Melo continually explores the boundaries between dance, visual art and theatre.
About Imaginarius
Imaginarius is a cultural project of the Municipality of Santa Maria da Feira dedicated to art in public space, conceived as an ecosystem that integrates creation, presentation and critical thought within a single strategic vision. It is grounded in the understanding that public space is a political and cultural site, where art does not emerge as ornament, but as a language that intervenes, questions and builds community. In this context, artistic creation in public space is approached as a demanding contemporary practice, shaped by social, urban and symbolic dimensions.
The annual festival of performing arts in public space constitutes its most visible and internationally projected moment. Over a few days, Santa Maria da Feira is transformed into an expanded territory of encounter between artists and companies from different geographies, sector professionals and diverse audiences. Streets, squares and buildings become stages for projects that cross disciplines, explore new dramaturgies and engage directly with the territory, affirming Imaginarius as a reference within the national and European landscape of performing arts in public space.
Throughout the year, the creation centre sustains and deepens this vision. It hosts artistic residencies, promotes research and co-production processes, and creates the conditions for works to be developed and to evolve in dialogue with the territory. This continuous dimension reinforces the project’s qualitative ambition, investing in artistic rigour, experimentation and the national and international circulation of the works produced.
Between festival and creation centre, an expanded dynamic is built that includes training, mediation, professional encounters and strategic reflection on the sector. Imaginarius works with the territory as an active agent, with its own identity and memory, fostering connections between creation, production, dissemination and debate. More than an annual event, it is an ongoing project that strengthens the cultural ecosystem, affirms the contemporary value of public art, and invites artists, professionals and citizens to imagine shared space as a site of collective responsibility and a future in the making.
For more information please visit https imaginarius.pt
Agenda
The Mirror in Portugal
