In its 6th edition, DDD - Festival Dias da Dança reaches 2022 rejuvenated and rethought for the times we are going through. After the cancellation of the Festival, in 2020, and a shared edition between online and face to face, in 2021, we strongly resume this choreographic meeting that, from Porto, Matosinhos and Gaia, observes the world through what the body tells us.  

In a real balance between national and international programme, DDD shows how diverse contemporary dance is nowadays and how it contributes to the construction of an encounter space, addressing three essential questions for the understanding of the contemporary world:    

Collective - What is built together?   

Plural - What diversity do we propose to encounter?  

Speech - How and about what does the body speak nowadays?  

There will be 13 days of discoveries, during which emerging artists share the stage with big names of contemporary dance. A DDD thought for the audiences but also for the local artistic community, which will find in the Festival an intense programme of practical and theoretical training, an essential tool for the future development of their speeches.  

As a compass for what you can find here and throughout the Festival, we have organised the programme in three sections, which frame the set of performances and the training and reflective offer.  

In DDD IN we aggregate the dance performances and the music programme (concerts and DJ sets), which will take place inside the various presentation venues.   

Most of the performances that embody DDD are being presented for the first time in Portugal, several of them are world premieres by choreographers who we already follow regularly or who are presenting at the Festival for the first time. This year, almost all the titles will be presented twice, thus promoting the "word of mouth" and the possibility for the audience to watch a wider range of offers. This fact also implies a longer permanence of the artists in the Festival, allowing their participation in the several training activities that DDD offers.   

In world or national premieres, we will have creations by Matija Ferlin, Tatiana Julien, Né Barros, Boris Charmatz, Christian Rizzo, Bruno Beltrão, Marta Soares, Martim Pedroso & Marlyn Ortiz, Meg Stuart, Catarina Campos & Melissa Sousa. We will also discover the most recent creations of Clara Andermatt & João Lucas, André Braga & Cláudia Figueiredo, Piny and Diana Niepce.  

This will also be the year in which we resume the focus on Brazilian choreographic creation, presenting a set of performances, installations and creations developed explicitly for the online format, through the partnership with the Panorama RAFT Festival in Rio de Janeiro. By making resistance their strength, in a political-social context in which arts do not find their due recognition, the Brazilian artists we present, from different generations and contexts, show how urgent and important their speeches are. Bruno Beltrão, Gustavo Ciríaco, Marta Soares, a concert by Luca Argel and three online projects by Soroya Portela, the Original Bomber Crew and the Danças em Transições Collective compose the core of Brazilian artists to be discovered.

This will also be the edition where we give greater visibility to other presentation formats and other choreographic aesthetics: to the stunning visual installation that Marta Soares will present at the Rampa gallery, to the Ball that will bring to the Rivoli stage big names of vogue. There is much to discover and experience in new presentation contexts, in which the collective plays a crucial role. 

Oriental, pop, ancestral, urban or hip hop dances will also be present in several performances: the tension-bodies by Bruno Beltrão, the kaleidoscopic-bodies by Piny, the game-bodies that Catarina Campos & Melissa Sousa will share with the youngsters, and also the witness-bodies that Martim Pedroso rewrites with Marlyn Ortiz will prove how diverse contemporary dance is nowadays. 

DDD OUT continues to be the anchor of a solid partnership with balleteatro, through Corpo + Cidade, its intervention project for the public space. This year, the gardens and squares of Porto, Matosinhos and Gaia will receive performances deliberately imagined for different morphologies and urban flows. balleteatro & the students from the Faculdade de Belas Artes do Porto, Miguel Moreira, Alan Sencades, Afonso Cunha & Giovanni Zoffoli, Beatriz Valentim and Bruno Senune will guide our eyes through their bodies and the landscapes that the cities hold. Out of Corpo + Cidade, but still within DDD OUT, Gustavo Ciríaco will also present two outdoor projects: one in Praça D. João I and another at the Serralves Tennis Court.  

We believe that a festival should be thought for different audiences and should be, at the same time, a powerful tool for the local artistic community. DDD CAMPUS is therefore our answer to the training, reflective and critical demand that the local choreographic community claims.   

In this edition, we will develop a significant set of workshops, daily classes and a cycle of talks entitled What are the festivals for? [Talks about (the) future (of) festivals] in the recently inaugurated CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva and in mala voadora. We will also accommodate our DDD Guests at CAMPUS. Four emerging artists from Cape Verde, Brazil and Portugal will join us throughout DDD, with critical monitoring and studios to work in, and with guaranteed participation in other performances and activities of DDD. This is a bet on artists who will certainly show their work in the next editions of the festival.  

This will also be the year that we associate with other cities in the DDD LINKS project. Through programming partnerships with Viana do Castelo, Coimbra, Leiria and Mértola, we will allow several artists to circulate in Portugal and, consequently, to facilitate the access of the project we support for wider audiences. 

As usual, the Meeting Point of DDD will be once again at Café Rivoli, open daily and with a programme of music and DJs on the two weekends of the festival.  

We would like to thank all the artists and partners of the Festival; the Porto City Hall and Ágora - Cultura e Desporto do Porto E.M., which make this venture possible; BPI / "La Caixa" Foundation, an enthusiastic patron of the festival; the city halls of Matosinhos and Gaia, which have been accompanying us in this adventure from the very first moment; and, finally, the distinguished President of the Portuguese Republic Professor Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who, for the first time, grants us his High Patronage.  

Have a good DDD!  

Tiago Guedes  

Artistic Director  

and the whole team of DDD – Festival Dias da Dança