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Exhibition | Francis Graça: Dance, splendor, and shadows
The exhibition on Francis Graça: Dance, splendor, and shadows is now at the Exhibition Gallery of Teatro Municipal Joaquim Benite, in Almada.
2023.10.20 to 2023.12.30 | Exhibition Gallery of Teatro Municipal Joaquim Benite, Av. Prof. Egas Moniz, Almada | Thursday to Saturday, 7 p.m to 9.30 p.m.; Sundays, 1 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Curated by Luísa Roubaud, it is a new version of the exhibition that was inaugurated at the Museu Nacional do Teatro e da Dança in May 2022. The inclusion of new documentary, photographic, and iconographic materials is the result of the curator's ongoing research work and the exhibition's design, focused on a critical and contextualized biography of Francis Graça, Portugal's first professional ballet dancer.
Produced by the Museu Nacional do Teatro e da Dança with the support of the Instituto de Etnomusicologia – centro de estudos em Música e Dança (INET-md), the new exhibition is co-produced by the Teatro Municipal Joaquim Benite, in partnership with the Cinemateca Portuguesa – Museu do Cinema; Universidade de Aveiro – Serviço de Biblioteca, Informação documental e Museologia; Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian; Radio Televisão de Portugal; Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival Archives; Centro de Estudos em Artes Performativas (CEAP).
FRANCIS GRAÇA: DANCE, SPLENDOR, AND SHADOWS
Evoking Francis Graça (1902-1980) is to retrace the initial steps of professional dance in Portugal. His association with the Bailados Portugueses Verde-Gaio, which he founded in 1940, directed, and choreographed until 1960, has blurred the perception of a broader artistic journey. What drove Francis as a dancer – and as a man – in that time and in a country without traditions in academic dance? What connections link him to the modernist generation and the ideology of the dictatorship? Where does his determination to invent a "Portuguese ballet" originate?
From the controversial appearance at the Teatro Novo (1925) to the success of the 1920s and 1930s – in Teatro de Revista, in select dance recitals, in the cultural embassies of the SPN, and in international tours – a life absorbed by dance emerges. Francis, the Estado Novo, and Verde-Gaio mutually serve in an uneven power relationship in which Francis is both a collaborator and counter-current figure, a tragic paradox to which he succumbs.
Over 120 years after Francis's birth, we are shown a luminous and tormented personality, brilliant in inventive improvisation but relentlessly disciplined. To remember him is to pay homage to a seminal figure in Portuguese dance and to understand the invisible threads that connect Portuguese dance from the past to the present.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS | Anna Klobucka, António Faria, Armando Jorge, Ellen Sapega, Fernanda Graça, Gonçalo Antunes de Oliveira, Helena Marinho, Jerónimo Pizarro, Patrícia Silva, Rui Vieira Nery, Sara Moreira, Sérgio Bordalo e Sá, Sofia Lopes, Teresa Carepo, and Mr. Videira.
More information here.
