Festwochen reframed: Marlene Monteiro Freitas MAL – EMBRIAGUEZ DIVINA

After the stunning Euripides experience Bacantes – Prelúdio para uma Purga, choreographer Marlene Monteiro Freitas returns to Vienna with her new and long-awaited production: Mal – Embriaguez Divina, which roots around the realm of evil. Bearing in mind that ‘evil’ is a narrow translation of the Portuguese ‘mal’. It is also about all that is foul, bad, and afflicting, and the de-personalisation of the negative. Traits once ascribed to Satan himself now designate larger ideologies. By dispersing the focal point on stage, Freitas addresses this dissolution of one evil devil into a wide array of wickedness. What is foreground; what is background? What is still a physical body, and what is already sound? Along with her troupe of trusty dancers and performers, Freitas ventures into this Divine Rapture. It is the combination of attention to detail and opulence that makes her works such shimmering and lively adventures. Tumbling images, carnivalesque escalations, grotesque grimaces: it is all stagecraft at its most substantial and sumptuous!