Happy Island

by La Ribot

In Happy Island there are people who are places and places that are people, and in the meeting, or tension, between the two, fiction is created, myth, legend. And we never leave reality. We never abandon people, in laughter or in tears.

We never leave Fanal, the vertiginous highest point in Funchal forest, where the sky seems to touch the earth’s entrails – this is also what we see in the film by Raquel Freire, as well as the wider community of the whole dance company in a celebration of expression of sensual feeling. We enter the tunnel, through these roads breached from nature, to confuse the senses.

Real-imaginary-specific. It is also in this temporal paradox of imagery that the live happening and the projected film move, where animal and human intersect in the body and in the act, which has as much of sexual, orgiastic, as it simply… is… or is simply willing to be in the smallest movement of personal expression. Personal Specific.
Claudia Galhós, writer and critic

CREDITS

CHOREOGRAPHIC PART

Design, direction and characterization / costumes: La Ribot
Choreography by: La Ribot com Bárbara Matos, Joana Caetano, Maria João Pereira, Sofia Marote, Pedro Alexandre Silva
Choreography assistant: Telmo Ferreira
Light Design / Operation and Technical Direction: Cristóvão Cunha
Artistic collaboration and direction of interviews: Josep-María Martín
Participants in the interviews: Emília Monteiro, Maria João Pereira, Bárbara Matos, José Figueira, Joana Caetano and Pedro Alexandre Silva
Music: Francesco Tristano, Jeff Mills, Archie Shepp, Oliver Mental Grouve, Atom tm, Raw C + Pharmakustik
Costume Design / Sewing: Laurence Durieux / Teresa Neves
Production Director: Henrique Amoedo and Paz Santa Cecilia
Executive production: Diogo Gonçalves and Paz Santa Cecilia

FILM

Concept: La Ribot and Raquel Freire
Direction: Raquel Freire
Choreography and costumes: La Ribot
Choreography assistant: Telmo Ferreira
Interpreters of Dançando com a Diferença: Aléxis Fernandes; Bárbara Matos; Bernardo Graça;
Cristina Baptista; Diogo Freitas; Filipa Vieira; Isabel Teixeira; Joana Caetano; José Figueira; Lígia Rosa;
Maria João Pereira; Natércia Kuprian; Nuno Borba; Pedro Alexandre Silva; Rui João Costa; Sara Rebolo; Sofia Pires; Sofia Marote; Telmo Ferreira; Teresa Martins; Vittória Vianna
Camera: Raquel Freire e Valérie Mitteaux
Edition: Raquel Freire
Assistant director: Valérie Mitteaux
Directed by: Henrique Amoedo and Paz Santa Cecilia
Executive production: Diogo Gonçalves and Paz Santa Cecilia