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.
Por exemplo, um 0v0 is a dance show aimed at children’s audiences that was born out of the desire to reflect on and give new meaning to the word “recipe”, raising and focusing on the question: How many recipes fit inside a recipe?
In this show, inspired by the surrealist works of artists Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington and Meret Oppenheim and the children’s book Por exemplo, uma rosa, by Ana Pessoa and Madalena Matoso, there are beings who dance inside a cloak with many flavors and play with a wooden spoon to better taste their strange cooking, where French fries are born from trees and eggs hide secrets.
In Por exemplo, um ovo they play with the universe of words, things and their meanings. If there are things, there are words that identify them and these words have their own meanings. There are things that have the same name and many names that describe a single thing. But what would happen if we mixed up things, words and meanings?
Por exemplo, um ovo proposes an experience dedicated to imagination, “illusionism” and “magic”, where the bodies on stage take on hybrid forms between humans and animals.
Diversos