New choreography by Olga Roriz ‘In the middle of the night’ today at Teatro Camões
Olga Roriz’s new choreography, “In the Middle of the Night”, which revisits the world of director Ingmar Bergman and celebrates his life and work, will be presented today, Saturday and 27, at the Camões Theater in Lisbon.
The play was premiered in April of this year at the Leiria Music Festival and then premiered at the São João National Theater in Porto, a co-producer, alongside the Municipal Theater of Bragança and the Municipal Theater of Vila Real .
At the time, the choreographer described the new piece as a reflection on the complexity of the human being and the individual conflicts, in homage to the filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007), in whose work the Portuguese creator found parallels.
Olga Roriz also stressed that her interest as a creator has been, above all, to “perceive people and their individual conflicts, the complexity of human relations” in line with the search carried out by Bergman, who was born in Sweden a hundred years ago. July 14, 1918, and deceased in 2007.
Bergman is “inescapable” and “has an immense work,” he commented on the multi-award-winning director at the Venice, Cannes and Berlin festivals, and also received three Hollywood Oscars.
This time of the anniversary – the centenary of the birth, which happened on July 14 of this year – the Portuguese creator thought that it would be a good moment to pay homage to the filmmaker, and his life and work.
Olga Roriz told Lusa that she read the biography of the Swedish filmmaker, reviewed several of her films, alone and together with the dancers, in a research that lasted more than a year, and that took her to the island of Fårö, Sweden, where Bergman lived the last 20 years, and where he was buried, “to try to figure out which place it was,” which the filmmaker had chosen to live.
The show ‘Midnight’ is the result of a co-creation with the Company’s dancers Olga Roriz, who also participated in the process, until the choreography appeared, watching films like ‘The Shame’, ‘The Silence’, ‘The Passion of Ana ‘, these more related to the piece.
The work process of the choreographer – who has been showing great vitality in recent years, with annual releases – is very methodical, makes lists, tables, copies sentences.
In the middle of the night, being a spectacle that proposes to approach the existentialist theme of Bergman, it is simultaneously a play about the process of creation, “in an incessant search for oneself and others.”
With the direction of Olga Roriz, the play has as interpreters André de Campos, Beatriz Dias, Bruno Alexandre, Bruno Alves, Catarina Câmara, Francisco Rolo and Rita Calçada Bastos.
The soundtrack features songs by Johann Sebastian Bach, Erik Satie, Primal Scream, Michelle Gurevich, Franz Schubert, Frédéric Chopin, Piotr Ilitch Tchaikovsky, Richard Wagner, Dolf van der Linden, Erhard Bauschke, Giovanni Fusco, Jefferson Airplane, sound excerpts from the film ‘Metropolis’ (1927), by Fritz Lang, ‘Persona’ (1966) by Ingmar Bergman, and an interview with the director.
The musical selection is Olga Roriz, João Rapozo and the performers.
The scenery and costumes are by Olga Roriz and Ana Vaz, the light drawing by Cristina Piedade, video by Olga Roriz and João Rapozo, sound design by Sérgio Milhano and photography by Alípio Padilha.
