How to create a dance of self-defence? Davi Pontes and Wallace Ferreira began shaping the Repertório series in 2018, drawing from gestural codes that circulate in the Black and queer communities of Rio de Janeiro: subtle signals that allow recognition and safe communication in public space. Now, with disarming simplicity, Pontes and Ferreira—surrounded by the audience, naked, without music—engage in a choreography that moves between synchronicity and suspension.

The rhythm of their sneakers on the floor is more than sound: it becomes a shared language, a force that gathers them in space, a counter-military march. At times, they freeze, as if something were about to happen, or as if becoming the queer and Black monuments that public spaces still lack.

Repertório N.1 was conceived as the first part of a trilogy, but in the political climate of Brazil under Bolsonaro, it never saw the light of day. Over the years, Pontes and Ferreira created N.2 and N.3, and only now bring this much-anticipated initial chapter into being. Inaugurating the festival, Repertório N.1 opens an experimental space where the body becomes a site of protection, bringing stories, pleasures, and vulnerabilities into the theatre, sharing a choreography that becomes, in itself, a form of resistance.

“A riveting performance epitomising precision, presence, and physical intensity”, Hannah Bothelton, 2025, The Spying the Stalls