Santa Maria da Feira, Aveiro, Portugal, Oct. 2, 2025 (Lusa) - Portugal's Contemporary Ballet of the North (BCN) will premiere on Saturday, on the river beach of Santa Maria da Feira, a show in which dancers wearing 20-kilogram costumes reflect on fashion illusions, textile waste and the "dark side" of this industry.
With free admission and a performance scheduled for 7:30 pm at Mâmoa, between the grassy banks of the Ul, the small strip of sand on this river and the calm waters of its bay, the new production by the company from the region of Aveiro and the Metropolitan Area of Porto is entitled ‘Cassandra’, in reference to the myth of the Greek princess whose accurate prophecies were always disregarded.
The artistic director of Ballet Contemporâneo do Norte (BCN) assures us, however, that the subject matter of the new show is "real and very current," because it is an adaptation of the master's thesis of fashion designer and costume designer Jordann Santos, whose professional experience in fashion shows such as Portugal Fashion and other events in the sector awakened him to the "frightening" environmental impact of the industry.
"The experience in this environment changed him," Susana Otero told Lusa. "At BCN, we have always recycled the costumes used in previous productions as much as possible, but in this case, what we wear is really the message - Jordann created a piece weighing 15 to 20 kilos for each of the seven dancers on stage, made from 30 to 40 pieces of used clothing," she points out.
To achieve this, the designer made several selections: for Susana, he created a costume consisting only of black pieces; for another dancer, he used only white clothes and cloths; for a third member of the cast, he designed a long tail made entirely of denim; for another, a flowing cloak made of the metallic foil used to wrap Easter eggs...
Some of this raw material was acquired from clothing factories with leftover stock that failed quality control, some was donated by acquaintances and fans of the company, and some even belonged to friends of the team who had passed away.
Jordann Santos confirms that ‘Cassandra’ was born out of his disappointment with "the dark side of the textile industry", which left him "heartbroken" in the face of the realisation that waste is inevitable and growing, product longevity is undesirable, absolute recycling is impossible and frugal consumerism is a utopia.
"When I started producing my collections in factories and discovered that the pieces I had ordered had been made by a woman, working as a subcontractor in a garage on the outskirts of the village of Balazar, in Póvoa de Varzim, this reality shook me, not only because of the terrible conditions of the facilities, but also because of the insignificant amount she was paid," recalls the designer.
The second shock came at a printing factory: "Having arrived early at the factory, I decided to take a walk around the premises and came across a stream of blood red and petrol blue contours. It was like an open wound in the middle of the earth, and this grotesque scene confronted me with the reality - known, ignored and invisible - of the negative and direct impact that “I” would have on the environment.
The performing arts then revealed themselves to be a "more balanced" career option, with the added advantage of allowing him, culturally and pedagogically, to explore issues such as the relationship between personal frustrations and consumption, between polluting emissions and climate change, between words and actions, between premonitions of the future and passivity.
Jordann Santos argues that, just like Cassandra, "today's society has a prediction of what is going to happen and needs an immediate solution, but in reality, it does not want to apply it", whether for reasons of complacency, capitalism or any other reason.
That is why BCN's new production runs through different states of mind and different degrees of consciousness: from the almost immobilising weight of costumes laden with consumerism, we move on to a purifying liberation and resist temporarily; but the allure of fashion ends up breaking even the well-intentioned, who then give in to the desire to copy and indulge in effusive, outdated celebrations, until the emotional void takes over and the whole cycle starts again, in a loop of dissatisfaction and guilt with no end date.
"We are the seeds of our own destruction," says Jordann Santos, who is not very optimistic about the power of his own show to convert people. But when asked what he will do with the costumes from “Cassandra” afterwards, he takes responsibility for his own creations: "I'm going to make them grow even more. There are always other pieces to add to them, and I have a dream that one day, I will dress an entire street with them."
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