Amarante's arts biennial runs ten shows over ten days, and every one is free
BapAmarante returns from 21 to 30 August with dance, theatre, film, literature and concerts staged in a municipal market, a country estate, museum cloisters and a church forecourt. There is no box office.
For the next ten days Amarante hands its everyday spaces over to contemporary performance. The second edition of BapAmarante, the town’s performing arts biennial, opens on Friday 21 August and closes on the 30th. The full programme carries ten pieces, all of them free, under the banner of reinventing what is held in common.
It starts at 22:00 on Friday inside the municipal market, with Cláudia Dias’s “segunda-feira: atenção à direita!”, part of her Sete Anos cycle. The next morning the same market changes job entirely: from 08:00 to 14:00, Sara Rodrigues and Rodrigo B. Camacho run “Saber a Terra – Ensaiar a Relação”, a workshop-performance that repeats on the 29th.
The programme, day by day
Saturday belongs to Quinta do Paço in Travanca, with three pieces back to back. Mónica Baldaque brings “As Casas da Vida de Agustina” at 18:30, from the Agustina Bessa-Luís literary circle. The concert QUIETUDE, by Vítor Joaquim with João Silva, follows at 20:15. At 21:30 there is Luís Vieira Campos’s film “A Casa da Sibila”. On Sunday the 23rd, dance moves outdoors to the town’s forest park with “Troca o Passo” by Ana Rita Teodoro and João dos Santos Martins, at 17:30.
The biennial then pauses for four days and picks up the following weekend. Jo Fong and Sonia Hughes take over the Casa da Juventude with “Neither Here Nor There” on the 28th, 29th and 30th. At 22:00 on the 28th, “simulacro” by Carminda Soares and Margarida Montenÿ is staged in the cloisters of the Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso modern art museum. The closing piece is a communal one: Filipa Francisco’s “a festa” brings together the Santa Cruz de Riba Tâmega singing and dance group and students from the Amarante conservatory, on the 29th at the Divino Salvador de Real festival ground and on the 30th at Largo de São Gonçalo. That same Sunday at 11:00, Cláudia Gaiolas’s “Antiprincesas – Catarina Eufémia” plays to children in a church forecourt.
Who is behind it
The biennial is run by Sekoia – Artes Performativas with Amarante town council, and the choice of venues is the point. Markets, churches, parks, museums, a square where a village festival is already under way — the work goes to where people happen to be, and nothing stands between them and the door.
Amarante is under an hour from Porto by road, which makes this an easy day out from the city. By the biennial’s second weekend, the Remédios pilgrimage in Lamego will also be running, about an hour further east.
Image: Sara Raquel / BapAmarante (press image)
