This section is dedicated to performances, installations and other artistic formats created for young audiences (of all ages). For information on workshops, seminars, lectures, etc. please access the section Transmission/ Contagion on the homepage.

Inside the head nothing is clear

with the visual artist Rita Sá

'Inside the head nothing is clear' is a performance for semi-prepared piano, articulated, automated, modular creatures, bells and sirens installation, noise boxes, animations and shadows.

Music, concept & performance (piano &......): Joana Sá
Visual concept, automated creatures & vídeo animations: Rita Sá
Light Design & operation: Tela Negra
Sound design & operation: Tiago de Sousa
Automated creatures (construction): Rita Sá & Joana Sá
Automated creatures (control panel construction): Tiago de Sousa
Bells and sirens installation (construction): Luís J Martins
Noise box (construction): André Castro
Video projected (18'18- 21'39) by Daniel Costa Neves, taken from 'In Praise of Disorder' (2013)
Duration: 30 min.For children above 4 years old
Comission by Fábrica das Artes - CCB - for Big Bang Festival

Where is this creative drive, messing up our ideas and creating new ones, coming from?
What is this feeling I cannot spell out? And all these strange creatures coming out of nowhere?
Well, it’s difficult to answer…
Inside the head nothing seems to be very clear.
But one thing we can be sure: dealing with all of this in a constructive way involves a whole deliriant and creative choreography...
This performance proposes an immersion in an imagery far beyond the scope of the words, rationalization and categorization. It's music to watch, to listen to... and mostly, to make your mind dance along.

Past presentations:

November 3, 2016 | Centro Cultural de Lagos
May 9-10, 2015 | Athens | Onassis Foundation
February 14-15 | Lille | Opéra de Lille
November, 9 2014 | Ghent |Flemish Opera
November 5-7, 2014 | Antwerp | DE Studio
November 2,2014 | Brussels | Bozar
November 1, Antwerp|| deSingel
October 17-18, 2014 | Blackbox - CCB | Lisbon

Through this looking glass

version for young audience

Photos © Daniel Costa Neves

music, concept & performance, joana sá
video, daniel neves
light design, daniel neves & tela negra
mobile, rita sá
sound operation, ângelo lourenço
lighting operation, tela negra

‘through this looking glass' is a performance by joana sá - for prepared piano, toy piano, electronics, props and a mobile. Inspired by the surreal and dreamlike world of Lewis Carroll and exploring the relationship between music and poetry, the performance is divided into two different parts: '13 mini(cre)atures for robert schumann' and 'freedom means little. what i desire still has no name'. While traveling 'through this looking glass', one meets sound creatures making their way through different musical logics in a bizarre and hypnotizing world. Joana slides into, beneath, in between and outside the piano as one who searches for the hidden logics, bowels and a forgotten childhood of this instrument that has become, because of its historical importance, of an almost untouchable 'severity'. After all, the piano can 'play'. And the pianist can 'play' too.

A version for younger audiences was commissioned by Teatro Municipal Maria Matos and presented together along with the ‘original’ performance in 2011.

O pássaro da cabeça

Recorded music piece with narrator & props
Music & performance, Joana Sá
Poems, Manuel António Pina
Narrator: Ágata Mandillo/ Jade Mandillo
Music piece recorded at Namouche studios by Joaquim Monte & mixed by Eduardo Raon.
Piece comissioned by Miso Music Portugal for its project Contos Contados Com Som/ Story-telling with Sound

Remember when your parents or grandparents used to read you bedtime stories? Remember the countless imaginary journeys to magical worlds where everything seemed possible? The emotion you felt as the story went on? Continuing the ancient tradition of storytelling, which is disappearing today, Miso Music Portugal has created an original and exceptional project: Contos Contados Com Som/ Story-telling with Sound. This project includes traditional Portuguese and international texts and stories, original stories written specifically for the project and stories by contemporary Portuguese writers. Original music has been composed for each story by a Portuguese composer. The music for each story sculpts and transcends the meaning of the words: a complexity of sounds travel through space - the narrator's voice, electroacoustic music, the transformations of the voice in real time, etc. Thanks to the extraordinary and unique proposals of each composer, the children's imagination, stimulated by the sound effects, can float and wander along with each plot.

Quarto dos músicos

Joana Sá

music, concept & performance, joana sá
video, daniel neves
light design, daniel neves & tela negra
mobile, rita sá

Commissioned by Fábrica das Artes, CCB for Big Bang Festival

Musicians are invited to occupy rehearsal rooms in CCB and to create there. During the Big Bang, we will be able to walk through the corridors that lead us to them.

Sons do salgueiral

Sérgio, Daniel, Joana & Luís, 2008

Installation created while living and working at CENTA – Center of Studies for New Artistic Tendencies in Salgueiral, a hamlet belonging to Vila Velha de Ródão Municipality. Sounds of Salgueiral was a project developed with Sérgio and Daniel, the children who lived in this hamlet. After a long period of making field recordings and working around this collection, an installation was created for the event CENTAMOSTRA (2008). The installation recreated the moment when Daniel and Sérgio guided us to their secret spots around the hamlet, sharing their secret sounds with us. For the installation, which took place in a little house in Salgueiral, two secret spots and a difficult pathway were created by the children, with our mentorship.

Projects for young audience (of all ages)