The Materiais Diversos Festival promotes the meeting of different audiences and imaginaries around the arts (dance, theatre, music and performance) with thought, questioning actuality and fostering cultural participation as a condition for citizenship. Born in Minde, in 2009, it spread to Alcanena and Cartaxo (in 2013) and became one of the most representative projects for programming outside the large centres in Portugal, attempting to think and act from the places it originates. It had been occurring annually until 2017 and became a biannual event starting with its 10th edition in 2019.
From the 5th to the 15th of October 2023, the Festival Materiais Diversos will be in Alcanena and Minde with a program of dance, theater and music shows, installations and conversations. Slowing down and making people, places and processes visible are the mottos of the 12th edition of the festival.
João dos Santos Martins was born in Santarém in 1989. He studied dance and choreography at various institutions in Europe between 2007 and 2011, including at P.A.RT.S. and e.x.er.c.e. He works as choreographer and dancer since 2008, articulating his practice through several specific collaborations in pieces such as Le Sacre du Printemps (2013) with Min Kyoung Lee, Autointitulado, 2015, with Cyriaque Villemaux and Antropocenas, 2017, with Rita Natálio. João also collaborated on Teatro Praga shows, adapted the solo Conquest (2011) by Deborah Hay, produced by the Serralves Foundtion, and dances in works by Eszter Salamon, Xavier le Roy and Ana Rita Teodoro. In 2017 he organized the cycle Nova—Velha Dança as a reflection on the recent history of dance in Portugal where, together with the historian Ana Bigotte Vieira, he developed a Timeline for collectively documenting these practices. His work has been shown in Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Romania, The Korean Republic, New Zealand, Mozambique, Chile, Brazil and Uruguay. His piece Projecto Continuado (2015) was awarded the prize for Choreography by the Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores in 2016.
Diversos