Adolescence is a difficult subject; there's no denying it. We really wanted our movement to feed on this strength, and to give back to those undergoing this life stage the possibility of identifying with our “dance”: the growing pains inscribed on the bodies and the faces, the struggle of each person with their circumstances, and on the relationship with their road companions.

Meanwhile, we adults, spectators who have already forgotten this risky crossing, remain in anticipation of what will result from this rite of passage into a future that seems not very bright... mechanical, heavy, formatted. And in the end, there we go back to the secret refuge of childhood, that idyllic place that can only exist in the memory of a time without a clock. And, at that exact moment, it is as if the show could start again.

– Imagine that you are an adult who is always very sad…

– I don't want to be a sad adult.

– I don't want to be an adult.

– Do you want to go to Neverland?

Sílvia Real, Susana Ribeiro Martins & Grupo 23: silêncio!

When developing the show, we kept in mind the problematic around the insertion of individuals into the social order and the seeking for escapes for the expression of individuality. Thus, backpacks emerged as an accessory, as a weight that children must carry from an early age, which implies their prompt insertion into a model of society, their subjection to the norm.

Young people and adults are finding opportunities to express themselves in isolation, while exploring the tension between oneself and the others, whom are seen both as obstacles and as support.

Social relationship structures were addressed in choreographic composition, allowing teenagers and professionals to experiment with dance methodologies, and one of the objectives of my collaboration was to contribute to the deepening of specifically choreographic questions, of greater complexity at the level of movement research and composition.

If this complexity did not always favour a sense of ​​lightness, it nevertheless found its counterpoint in the performances of the younger participants, who, in addition to playing live the music composed by themselves in co-creation, invade the stage with their playfulness and the delight of hovering over it.

Francisco Camacho

Times of vertigo are times of falling. There is suffocation, but there must be relief. There is fear, but there is hope. How do we position ourselves in this challenging historical moment? How do we explore potentially overwhelming topics without crushing the innocence and hope of these children and young people? We need refuges of comfort, we need spaces and times to stop, to relearn how to listen, to be able to be with ourselves and with others. We need to decolonise minds and bodies.

Young people carry the pure energy of indignation within them, with the right to dream and the equal right to be angry. Refusing to accept our dystopian reality, they reimagine it according to their purest dreams. We need to respect childhood, adolescence, youth, their autonomy to think and their power to build. History really is built by us all. We want and believe in a coexistence without fears, based on horizontal pillars of responsibility, power, respect, identities, equality, freedom.

Simone Andrade

We started out by thinking about how to make music for a group of young people who were working on choreography. We listened to works by Ligeti, Berio, and Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.” We saw scores by Ligeti, G. Crumb, Xenakis, we studied the possibilities of writing unusual sounds, we observed graphic scores.

We created graphic scores as a basis for improvisation, and tested how they supported our memory, stimulated our creativity, gave us space for creative freedom, for experimentation, while at the same time asking us for rigor in execution. We chose lines as the material for writing our sounds. We observed videos of young people/dancers performing and drew lines from their body movements, which we then transformed into scores, assigning them several reading parameters – heights, volume, density, rhythms, character. We then joined the dancers and improvised together based on the material that we had written as a result of our exploration. Then we recorded everything we wanted – improvisations with different limits and different formations; we wanted to know how they worked and to be surprised. This was the seed and is the root of our show’s music.

Ana Sofia Sequeira