Meu Céu (My Heaven)

With “Meu Céu”, Andermatt accepts the challenge of creating a large scale street show that involves a multidisciplinary team of 32 persons, the composers João Lucas and Vítor Rua, performers, dancers, a group of over-60 performers from Santa Maria da Feira, traceurs, and a band called The Losers. The eclecticism of the cast and the vivid creativity of each of its elements hold together the duality that exists in the piece: the individual and autonomous experience, and the interdependence of the collective.

“Meu Céu” both absorbs and uses the architectonic features of the performance space: the Igreja da Misericórdia, at Santa Maria da Feira, and the Castle of São Jorge, in Lisbon, bringing together the audience in a kind of communal rite.

 

“We live in a vast labyrinth, where different truths intersect. Facing a multiplicity of events and a variety of emotions, we ask ourselves what our function is, which tasks we propose to carry out…and we doubt! Lost between the clash of harmony and chaos, of strength and fragility, experimentation and error, the earthly and the spiritual, we discover in our individual conscience persistent echoes of the collective thought. We then celebrate the union of things, the sublime, the beliefs, and the immortality of ideas and works that we create and share, without ever fully owning them.”

Clara Andermatt (2008)

categories

Artistic direction and choreography Clara Andermatt | Musical composition João Lucas and Vítor Rua | Set design Jean-Marc Dercle and João Calixto | Costume designer Aleksandar Protic | Lighting designer Anatol Waschke | Direction assistant António Oliveira | Literary collaboration Jorge Lima Barreto | Performers - musicians: Ana Celeste Ferreira (singer), Vítor Rua (guitar), João Lucas (piano), The Losers – Rock band (Rui Dâmaso, Tiago Miranda and Zé Miguel); dancers: Avelino Chantre, Luís Guerra, Tânia Carvalho | Actress: Lúcia Sigalho | Parkour Portugal: André Pereira, Christopher Hunstock, Flávio Horta, Hilário Freire, João Gonçalves, Luis Simsim and Tiago Silva | Santa Maria da Feira +60 group: António Fonseca Ribeiro, Aurora Soares Reis, Baptistina Oliveira, César Augusto Santos, Conceição Gomes Santos, Emília Alves Sá, Emília Henriques Cardoso, Irene Gonçalves Santos, Maria Arminda Silva, Maria Amélia Silva, Maria Ascenção Pinto, Maria Celeste Silva, Maria Clara Oliveira, Maria Eduarda Silva and Rosa Soares Santos | Technical direction Anatol Waschke | Sound operator Ângelo Lourenço | Lighting operator Thomas Toutain | Stage technicians António Quaresma and João Merino | Stage management Narcisa Costa | Production ACCCA Clara Andermatt Company | Co-production Festival Imaginarius and EGEAC | Support Santa Maria da Feira City Hall, CHS – Professional Sound and Lighting, Re.al, Sensurround Companhia de Teatro

Photos by Luís Barbosa

Next creation

E Dançaram para Sempre (And They Danced Forever)

< back