The Fever of the Times

Wednesday 16 June · 21:00

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Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Lisbon

In 1938, a group of artists exiled in Paris, fleeing Nazi persecution and fascism, attempted to stage a show. Fièvre du Temps, with choreography by Julia Marcus and Ludolf Child, and libretto by Jean Yachec Vinot, dealt with the restlessness of its time: the arms race, industrialization, the financial stock market crisis, the acceleration of the rhythm of dance... The music, written by composer Fernando Lopes-Graça, himself in exile from the Salazar regime, translated that agitation. The piece had a single performance in a public rehearsal, but, for unknown reasons, never premiered. Almost a century later, Europe is once again the stage for the rise of fascism, of war, of discriminatory policies, and of the proliferation of hatred toward people considered foreign. Starting from Lopes-Graça's score for two pianos, untouched since the single performance in Paris, from remnants found about the piece and from the paths of the artists who were part of this lost episode of history, A Febre dos Tempos (deliberately in the plural) asks how the body can be understood as the axis of a turbulent temporality, unfolded between conflict and resistance, memory and becoming.

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