idiota

Linchpin of Marlene Monteiro Freitas’s 2022 performance “idiota” is the limited space of a transparent and three dimensional box. Conceived and embodied by Marlene Monteiro Freitas herself, Idiota aims to mislead the audience before reuniting with it at the end.
At the origin of this creation by the Cape Verdean choreographer lies a dialogue between her work and that of the painter Alex Silva, who passed away in 2019 at the age of 45, and an artefact of Greek mythology. Pandora’s myth probably is first that surfaced as an answer to the age-old questions of human existence: Why do people get sick and die? Why do bad things happen? But although Pandora is often despised as the bringer of irreversible evil, she also brought fertility, since birth and death did not exist before she released them. Against this background, we follow Idiota sneaking into Pandora’s box in the desire to spy on Hope. But after reaching the core of the box, the title character’s senses and self-orientation will be fully assaulted, turning windows into mirrors, the door into a self-portrait. To escape Pandora’s box, Idiota must tackle these challenges.