Marlene Monteiro Freitas
NÔT
State-of-the-art in contemporary dance: the festivals kicks off with the visionary opening piece of Festival d'Avignon.
Past dates
8/6/25
8:15 PM
8/7/25
8:30 PM
8/8/25
8:30 PM
8/9/25
7:00 PM
Few names are more closely associated with the future of choreography than Marlene Monteiro Freitas. Born in 1979 on Cape Verde, the choreographer has made her name with works that are as rigorously formal as they are wildly expressive — earning, among other honours, the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale. From 2026 she will also, together with Summer Festival regular Florentina Holzinger, take on the artistic co-direction of Berlin’s Volksbühne.
After last appearing at the Summer Festival in 2020 with her theatrical grotesque MAL, Freitas now returns with her latest work: NÔT — Creole for “night” — inspired by the tale of Scheherazade from "One Thousand and One Nights". In the story, a king has his wife executed each morning, only to marry a new one the same day. Scheherazade escapes her fate by telling him a story each night — always breaking off at daybreak, so that he spares her life to hear the continuation. This perpetual suspension gives NÔT its pulse: meticulously choreographed, Freitas sets the piece to percussive festival music, ranging from Moroccan wedding music to Igor Stravinsky’s Russian peasant „Wedding", unfolding a succession of high-energy scenes that open into a phantasmagorical space.
Like in Cape Verde’s carnival — another of Freitas’ touchstones — beauty and ugliness, sorrow and joy, dream and reality merge. With her ensemble of musicians, dancers, and performers, Marlene Monteiro Freitas offers a vision of a world shaken by crises and wars, where art becomes a tool for survival.
