La Ribot

Happy Island takes its title from the island of Madera, where Henrique Amoedo’s dance company Dançando com a Diferença is based, which is mostly made up of disabled performers. Five of these dancers accompany La Ribot in this jubilatory show that conveys the spirit of freedom of this singular community, which made such a strong impression on her when she discovered it. Produced in front of a film by Raquel Freire projected on the back of the stage, all the better to mingle the real and the imaginary, the performance liberates their furious desire to live, experienced here in all its splendour. As comical as it is experimental, the dramaturgy of Happy Island activates the questions that direct La Ribot’s work, while bringing into play processes of integration and the apprehension of the Other, which fix the choreographic forms that are particular to each of the performers. As a vibrant testimony to life as much as a pure homage to the desire to dance, the piece thus exalts on the stage the unsuspected beauty of these emancipated bodies, who derive their strength from their indiscipline.