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lemi
ponifasio
tempest
II
são
luiz teatro municipal | duration 1h30 | tickets 10 € / 5
€
thursday _ 22 may 21h | friday _ 23 may 21h
Lemi Ponifasio develops his work with a company of performers
who come from across the South Pacific. Tempest
II is inspired
by Shakespeare’s homonymous play and the political writings
of the philosopher Giorgio Agamben about state power and
human rights. He features the Algerian refugee Ahmed Zaoui,
detained without trial in a New Zealand prison, and the
Maori activist Tame Iti, arrested during an anti-terror
raid on his community in Ruatoki.
A parable of the tentacles
of power, Tempest unhestitatingly exposes the desperate
state of colonised Oceania. It invokes the travel of Captain
Cook to the South Pacific at the end of the 18th century
and the subsequent colonisation of the islands and oppression
of their inhabitants.
MAU, the name of the company, is taken from the popular
movement that fought for the independence of Samoa. With
his company, Ponifasio has been developing a unique performance
idiom, starkly minimalist, yet poetic and generous, based
on the ceremonies and ritual songs of the living cultures
of the Pacific. A world inhabited by humans, gods, birds,
animals and ancestors. He fully assumes the political reponsability
to develop a contemporary art form out of the ostracized
indigenous cultural traditions: “For me contemporary is
the legitimate child of tradition - not the bastardization
of it.”
conception, direction, stage lemi
ponifasio | light helen
todd | performers
mau | production mau |
supported by creative new
zealand | support presentation lisbon creative
new zealand |
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