“Uma História da Dúvida” was created in Cape Verde in 1998, in close collaboration with a vast team of artists and professionals from different artistic and technical fields. The piece stands out for its unusual scale, the result of the multiple contributions of all that were involved in this creation. The piece set out from a series of interviews that the dancers and musicians made with the population of São Vicente Island. The questions were about the meaning of Love, Doubt, the Future, and the End of the World. Inspired by the wisdom of the interviewees’ answers, the musicians and dancers transformed them into poems, and then the poems into rhythms, music, and movement.
“Uma História da Dúvida” starts with a film that works as a prologue, placing the piece in a privileged territory to initiate the journey. Alone on his motorbike, the traveller follows the delirious path of life, which is made of questions, hope, and fleeting certainties. The speed of thought oscillates between fear and escape, a sound in between noise and harmony, images in between reality and fiction. Everything that happens afterwards is a development of these premises.
The voluminous set accommodates different actions within the same scenic space. The individual trajectory becomes a collective one, where communication, conflict, beliefs, play and the social dimension are examined.
“Uma História da Dúvida” premiered at the 1998 World Exposition’s “Dive into the Future” Festival, in Lisbon, had 40 performances in 8 countries, in Europe, the USA, Canada, Brasil and Cape Verde. The piece was contemplated, in 1999, with the Prémio Almada, the highest award from the Portuguese Ministry of Culture, and was also presented as the Festival de Almada “Show of Honour”, in 1999.