While the audience searches for their seats on the impressive grandstand in the main courtyard of the Palais des Papes, a performer in a miniskirt captivates them with her circular, almost hypnotic hip movements. An entertaining prelude to the premiere at the Festival d'Avignon, where Marlene Monteiro Freitas dissects 1001 Nights in an anti-exoticizing way. NÔT also refers to the word for «night» in the Cape Verdean Creole language, the choreographer's homeland.
First, a doll-like figure, perhaps one of the many Scheherazades that evening, enters the stage. She wears a mask: lifeless eyes, pale yellow skin, and rosy cheeks. She frantically scrubs her surroundings. The metallic-white construction on the stage is reminiscent of prison cells — sterile, visible from the outside, and reduced to ...
