It's at CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva that the 2025 edition of DDD - Festival Dias da Dança officially begins: from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Spanish creator Aina Alegre will lead the workshop Imagination and rythm as a medium of invocation. Aina Alegre is a choreographer, performer and co-director of the Centre chorégraphique national de Grenoble. Through dance, she explores different relationships with the collective body and her research focuses on the notions of memory and archive, which run through all her work. For this workshop, Alegre will share some of the ideas explored during the creation of the show FUGACES — which she presents later that day. The show explores Carmen Amaya (1918-1963), a flamenco figure whose story and dance became the driving force behind Alegre's research. In this workshop, aimed at performing arts professionals and advanced students, the body's rhythm and music will be worked on, as well as different qualities and sequences of movement, based on video files of Amaya. The workshop continues on the 24th, at the same time. 

At 7:30 p.m. at the Palácio do Bolhão, FUGACES is presented. In this piece, Alegre freely interprets the dances and energy of Amaya, an artist whose career has varied between Barcelona and Hollywood. As if she were an elusive ghost, her presence graces the bodies, sound and light of this new creation. The show is performed again the following day, April 24, at 9:30 p.m. and costs €12.  

To close the first day of the festival, the premiere of Os Gigantes, by Victor Hugo Pontes with Dançando com a Diferença, is presented at 9.30pm in the Rivoli Grand Auditorium. Os Gigantes da Montanha, Pirandello's last play, was interrupted by the author's death and it is this idea - that everything that happens on stage is unfinished - that the choreographer from Guimarães is working on in his new creation. Together with Dançando com a Diferença, a company founded in 2001 in Madeira, which has stood out for disseminating the concept of inclusive dance and promoting the collaboration of people with and without differences, this work focuses on the boundaries that separate truth and illusion, but also laughter and tears. This closing of the first day is intended to be a collective dream. The performance on April 23 also features audio description. Os Gigantes is performed again on April 24 at 19:30. Tickets cost €12.  

The festival continues until May 4 and the rest of the programme and all the information can be found at festivaldd.com