“Terra Cobre” is a new creation that brings together musician and sculptor João Pais Filipe with choreographer and dancer Marco da Silva Ferreira. It is born from and expands on the traditional art of rattling in Alcáçovas - an ancestral method of a manual manufacturing process, which UNESCO has declared an Urgent Salvage Need - with contemporary artistic practices, anchored in percussion and dance.
Marco da Silva Ferreira
João Pais Filipe
The performance and installation “Terra Cobre” challenges traditional Portuguese iconography and symbolism, with rattles and their representations (Caretos, pastoralism, circus, etc.), to place it on an exploratory and sensory level. The project investigates a device that offers sound and choreographic premises based on material heritage, questioning historical and cultural properties.
The sensitivity and musical technique of Pais Filipe’s live music intertwines with the dance of Marco da Silva Ferreira, whose body is used as a percussive element. There are many references and images that we see on parade, coming from an earthly and pastoral world (we hear the song “Ao nascer da bela aurora”) but also one of ecstasy and celebration - Marco da Silva Ferreira’s movement moves between states, inhabited by trance. Shepherd, harlequin and Careto, visual, sound and movement references cross in Marco da Silva Ferreira’s fascinating expressiveness.
Repetitive, hypnotic and pulsating, “Terra Cobre” is a creation for unconventional spaces, which calls for the audience to be immersed around two of the most talented artists on the Portuguese national scene.
