A documentary about the life and work of Olga Roriz, a dancer and choreographer who ranks among the most important in contemporary dance, will be premiered on April 3 in Lisbon, signed by director Cristina Ferreira Gomes.
Produced by Mares do Sul and directed by Cristina Ferreira Gomes, the documentary is written by Luiz Antunes and is the result of two years of filming that followed the process of creating the show “Pas d’Agitation” and its premiere in Paris in 2022, according to the production.
Under the title “Olga Roriz”, the documentary – the result of an “intimate journey through the creative and intense worlds” of the choreographer – will have its premiere at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, in Lisbon, on April 3, at 6:30 p.m., with free admission, in the presence of the creator, and will premiere on RTP2 on April 5.
The long shooting period allowed Cristina Ferreira Gomes – who has also signed a documentary about the choreographer Vera Mantero, in 2023, and is due to release another this year about Clara Andermatt – to establish a close relationship with the choreographer, and build an intimate film about the life and work of Olga Roriz, passing through different geographies, such as the Azores, Lisbon, Évora and Paris.
Olga Roriz’s dance, theater and video repertoire consists of more than 90 works, the most recent of which – “A hora em que nãoíamos nada dos uns outros” (The time we knew nothing about each other) (2023), “Deste Mundo e do Outro” (2022), “A minha história não é igual à tua” (My story is not the same as yours), performed by inmates, “Seis meses depois” (Six months later) (2020), and “Autópsia” (Autopsy) – like most of her productions, have been performed across the country.
Roriz has created and restaged pieces for Ballet Gulbenkian, Companhia Nacional de Bailado, Ballet Teatro Guaira (Brazil), Ballets de Monte Carlo, Ballet Nacional de España, English National Ballet, American Reportory Ballet and Alla Scala in Milan (Italy).
In 2015, he marked 20 years of the company in his own name and 40 years of his career with a revisiting of the play “Private Property” (1996) at the Centro Cultural de Belém (CCB) in Lisbon.
Born in Viana do Castelo in 1955, Olga Roriz studied classical ballet and modern dance with Margarida Abreu and Ana Ivanova, joined the Lisbon National Conservatory Dance School and became a prima ballerina with the Gulbenkian Ballet, where she was later invited to choreograph.
In 1995, she created the Olga Roriz Company, currently housed in the Pancas Palha Palace, provided by Lisbon City Council.
Her dance repertoire also includes the plays “Pedro e Inês”, “Inferno”, “Start and Stop Again”, “Private Property”, “Electra”, “The Eyes of Gulay Cabbar”, “Nortada”, “Jump-Up-And-Kiss-Me”, “Pets”, “The Rite of Spring”, “Before They Kill the Elephants” and “Syndrome”.
She was awarded the insignia of the Order of Infante D. Henrique (2004), the Grand Prize of the Portuguese Society of Authors (2008) and the Latinity Prize (2012), among others.
Contemporary dance has been a regular theme in the documentary work of Cristina Ferreira Gomes and Luiz Antunes, a mutual interest that has deepened since the production of the 16-part documentary series “Portugal que Dança”.
Cristina Ferreira Gomes, a director who runs the production company Mares do Sul, made her debut with the documentary “Mulheres ao Mar”, for which she won the Revelation Award at the Caminhos do Cinema Português Festival in 2002. In 2020, with “Os Últimos Dias”, she won the award for best documentary at the FesTin festival.
Luiz Antunes, a dancer, choreographer and researcher with a background in dance and music, studied with Anna Mascolo and also studied at the Paris Opera and Jacques Lecoq’s school. He was also an artistic and production trainee at Ballet Gulbenkian and assistant to Olga Roriz.
He has been working as a choreographer since 2000. He was the founder of Heurtebise – Associação Cultural, and has published several works and articles in the field of research.
As well as working with Cristina Ferreira Gomes, she conducted the interviews and collaborated on the script for the documentary “Um corpo que Dança” (A body that dances) about the Gulbenkian Ballet, directed by Marco Martins.