Este Mundo arises from the magic that might exist in everyday gestures: simple, recurring, sometimes fragile. This is the first collaboration between Bouchra Ouizguen—one of the most important current choreographers—and Dançando com a Diferença, a Madeira-based company of dancers with and without disabilities. Drawing connections between Madeira and nearby Morocco (where Ouizguen lives and has developed her practice), they build a choreographic language to explore what exists beyond words.

The process unfolded over weeks, not just in the studio, but through days, evenings, and dinners spent together, allowing joy and vulnerability to emerge, giving true meaning to this thing we call “life”. Now, on stage, everyday gestures are displaced and transformed into dance. Their choreography is shaped by states—light, warmth, weight, stability—that circulate between bodies, connecting them in ephemeral unions.

Inspired by writer Fernando Pessoa’s attention to silence and poet Mahmoud Darwish’s sensitivity to what transcends language, Este Mundo touches on the things we share daily, but cannot name. Ouizguen opens the festival with a joyous and profound journey into the small moments of a shared life: an ode to what, despite everything, this world, este mundo, might still quietly offer.