Wura Moraes | Confluences / Reverberations

“Reverberations” is the second creation within the larger project “Confluences” by dancer and choreographer Wura Moraes. Through this project, she initiates a series of artistic experiments based on her relationship, as performer and creator, with the life and work of her father, Mário Calixto (1960–1996), and her uncle, Miltércio Santos (1961–2024), both choreographers and performers.

This new creation departs from biographical research drawn from memories that have been latent throughout Moraes’ artistic journey. Her trajectory is intrinsically intertwined with the artistic pursuits of her father and uncle, and she recognizes the importance of preserving their legacy while revitalizing and sharing it with a wider audience.

Autobiographical in nature, this project raises questions about who is responsible for revealing archives that escape official narratives. Mário Calixto and Miltércio Santos, born in Bahia, Brazil, developed their own approach to dance. Starting from self-taught foundations, they created an increasingly particular language intersecting with the technique of butoh and marked by performative versatility that is both contemporary and timeless. Their work references their Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous ancestry and engages with the paradoxes of their reality as immigrants in Portugal.

Following the experience of creating and sharing “HENDA I XALA – Saudade que fica”, the first choreographic development within “Confluences” (co-produced by DDD 2024), Moraes continues to explore the connections between life, creation, death, spiraling time, and ancestry. Using the body as her primary means, she questions the concepts of identity, displacement, and memory – driven by the challenge to understand how something so particular can become common and move us all.

“Reverberations”, co-produced by the DDD 2026 Festival, will develop through a series of residencies among Grand Luxe network partners, aiming to establish interlocutors along the creative process, strengthen interactions, and share artistic practices.

The work is propelled by a responsibility to self-map practices that are effective in circumventing the systemic erasure of certain presences and histories. Through an investigation that encompasses movement and driven by the strong conviction that generating references can be life-saving, it seeks to amplify overlooked narratives and challenge the invisibility of artistic legacies rooted in the European territory yet absent from the official histories of dance in Portugal.