“Terra Cobre” is a new creation that brings together musician and sculptor João Pais Filipe and choreographer and dancer Marco da Silva Ferreira. It is born from and expands upon the traditional art of Alcáçovas – an ancestral method of a manufacturing process that UNESCO has declared an Urgent Need for Safeguarding – with contemporary artistic practices, anchored in percussion and dance.
The performance and installation “Terra Cobre” challenges traditional Portuguese iconography and symbolism, with the 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 its 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. Sometimes Shepherd, sometimes Harlequin and sometimes 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.