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First weekend between Faro and Loulé

On Friday, October 18th, Teatro das Figuras in Faro welcomes the Spanish musician Niño de Elche, also known as the man who bombarded Flamenco according to the newspaper El Mundo. At 9.30pm, his most recent project Colombiana will be presented, an album that is changing the way music is seen in Spain, specially Flamenco.

© Alvaro Perdices

Later on, around 11.30pm, Verão Azul inaugurates the festival’s meeting point in Faro, at Faro’s Gimnásio Clube, with Variations to Portuguese Guitar, from the Algarve’s talented musician Ricardo J. Martins, a concert that will for sure be marked by many improvisations.

During the weekend, other names will also make headlines, such as Cátia Pinheiro, who will take The Walk #2 to the streets of Loulé, on the 19th and 20th of October. This is a site-specific audio-path that uses the city and the fictions drawn from it to conduct the audience in a personal and unique journey.
In Loulé, this path will start at 3pm, beginning at Convento do Espírito Santo. These will be individual exits, with a 4 minutes intermission between each spectator, and tickets are available at Cine-Teatro Louletano. The Walk #2 was developed in one of Pinheiro’s residence that took place in the Algarve. The piece is presented in Lagos, starting at Lago’s Military Supporting Facilities.

On Saturday, October 19th, Raquel André presents her Collection of Artists, at 9.30pm at Cine-Teatro Louletano. For this new show that premiered on September at Teatro Nacional D.Maria II, the artist created a collection that dwells on each artist, their practices and work tools, as well as their thoughts and biographies. This work integrates the Collection of People tetralogy.

© Afonso Sousa

At 11.30pm, at the Solar da Música Nova Auditorium, the Festival’s meeting point in Loulé, the show of the Portuguese rapper Russa will take place. Much like all the activities happening at Verão Azul meeting points, this is a free entrance event.

In Faro, the Chilean collective MilM2 (a thousand square meters) will walk the city streets (October 19th and 20th) with Proyecto Pregunta, a device whose purpose is to encourage civic participation, to promote the discussion in the public space on social issues, and that will rely on the participation of a volunteer’s group from the local community. The project will also be presented at Quarteira, on October 26th and 27th.

Theatre piece on one of Brazil’s biggest environmental disasters and a photo exhibition inaugurate Verão Azul

Verão Azul 9th edition – International Arts Festival, takes place between October 17th and November 2nd, in the cities of Loulé, Faro and Lagos. The Associação 289 in Faro hosts, on Friday October 7th, at 6.30pm, the inauguration of André Príncipe’s Expats, returning to Verão Azul, this time in a solo exhibition format.

© André Príncipe

Also on Thursday, in Loulé, Verão Azul presents Mining Stories, for the first time in Portugal, from the Belgian duo Silke Huysmans and Hannes Dereere, at 9.30pm at Cine-Teatro Louletano. This documental theatre play talks about what was once considered Brazil’s biggest socio-environmental disaster. On November 5the, 2015, a dam on the Brazilian municipality of Mariana broke, causing a mud flood that devastated several villages. Silke Huysmans grew up in Minas Gerais and twenty years later Huysmans went back to Brazil with Dereere for the construction of this intriguing journey, that visits memory, politics, religion, and storytelling. The ticket for this performance is 5€, and it can be bought online or at the Cine-Teatro Louletano’s box office.

At Cine-Teatro Louletano’s dressing rooms, between 6pm and 8.30 pm, it will be possible to watch the premiere of In Between, by Polish artist Paulina Szcesna. This is a 20 minutes performance between artist and one member of the audience, a back-to-back encounter where you can’t look back. In Between is presented on October 17th, 19th and 25th, at Cine-Teatro Louletano and at Teatro das Figuras, in Faro, October 18th, 24th and 26th, between 6pm and 8.30pm. With free entrance, participants should register in advance, by email via info@festivalveraoazul.com.

The first day of the festival closes with the inauguration of Verão Azul’s meeting point in Loulé, where João Caiano and Martim Santos spoken word project A journey to the building of Universes, by 2Mikkers – Imaginário e Lágrima will be presented. the show will take place at 11.30pm, with free entrance, at Solar da Música Nova Auditorium, located at Loulé’s Music Conservatory – Francisco Rosado.

The 9th Verão Azul Festival is here!

VERÃO AZUL arrives to it’s 9th edition and between October 17th and November 2nd it will wander between Loulé, Faro, Quarteira and Lagos with an extensive programme of theatre, dance, music, performance, visual arts and cinema.

National and international artists invite the audience to think about the Anthropocene concept: Alessandro Sciarroni dances animal migrations; Silke Huysmans and Hannes Dereere depict an environmental disaster in Brazil; Gustavo Ciríaco builds memorized and imagined landscapes on stage; Niño de Elche, Flamenco’s enfant-terrible, presents a show on the various “traffics” between Colombia and Spain; Cátia Pinheiro invites the audience to make an audio journey in Loulé and Lagos; the collective Mil Metros 2 gathers and exhibits inhabitants’ questions through the streets of Faro and Quarteira.

© Cláudia Lancaster & Gonçalo Duarte

Verão Azul also offers several immersive moments, such as André Uerba’s performance-installation, the concert-installation by Gabriel Ferrandini, André Cepeda and Maria Reis, Raquel André’s intimate experiences with people she has been collecting and Tó Trips and Tiago Gomes’ journey-performance, inspired by Jack Kerouac.

And moments of gathering with concerts by national musicians and musicians from the Algarve at the two meeting points of the festival, in Loulé and Faro, a space for meetings between audience and artists.

We celebrate the beginning of the Festival with the opening of an exhibition by André Príncipe in Faro at Associação 289 and its end with a party at LAC – Laboratório de Actividades Criativas, home of longtime friends.

Without stopping, we move ON THE ROAD!

Raquel André collected artists in Faro

The artistic residency lead by portuguese artist Raquel André opened a new cycle for Festival Verão Azul. As of this year, the festival assumes a new format of a biennial event, and it’s next edition will take place in October 2019 in Loulé, Lagos and Faro.
Raquel André challenged two artists from Algarve to participate in her final creation. The residency was held from 13 to the 19 of May at Teatro das Figuras in Faro. The four residencies and the laboratory taking place this year will feed into the festival’s next edition.

© Teatro das Figuras

An open talk inviting the participation of the local community took place the 17 of May under the pretext of this residency, in which Raquel André talked about her creative process and the “collections” she is up to. It was a very close and relaxed moment leading all participants into the artist “ephemeral” universe.

More info here.