© Cristina Planas Leitão / “[hug]”
They approach, arms open,
and tear through the air.
They hold you, crush you,
your heart falters, your body staggers.
They don’t let go.
They don’t want to let go.
[hug] is a choreographic study for twenty bodies about the post-something. Above all, it is a meeting after a blackout. In a time that seems to come after collapse, but is neither future nor past. As if time were linear — which it isn’t.
At the center, human and more-than-human bodies, as a field of ruin and reconstruction. Bodies as political boundaries, as sites of resistance, as acts of affection. Each gesture is a residue, an impact, an echo of what remained or what never came to be.
[hug] proposes the embrace as both force and fracture. An embrace that holds and suffocates, that persists until collapse, that doesn’t let go. An embrace that is also a symbolic battlefield where power relations, the desire to belong, and the possibility of transformation are inscribed.
Each body brings its own urgency, and movement stretches to the point of exhaustion, creating suspensions, layers of attention, small deaths. We work in the fold between the intimate and the political, between the concrete and the abstract, between the visible and the intuited.
[hug] does not aim to be new. It seeks to excavate. To point to what is invisible from being so present.
It is a raw choreography, made of layers that unravel, with time and silence, with ambiguity and breath. A work that refuses spectacle, a persistent gesture, a body that won’t let go.
Cristina Planas Leitão presents a creation especially conceived for Serralves em Festa, by invitation of Instável – Centro Coreográfico. The piece stems from her unique choreographic language and will be developed in dialogue with the space, time, and energy of the event. The performance will be carried out by the students of FAÍCC.
Cristina Planas Leitão is a performing arts curator, dramaturg, and choreographer based in Portugal. Her integrated curatorial practice focuses on developing sustainable creative formats, new narratives, and relationships of care within the performing arts, with a growing interest in politically and socially engaged experimental practices. Cristina is interested in the intersections between curatorial, organizational, research, and educational practices.
In 2025, she co-founded SUPERNOVÆ with Natalia Álvarez Simó (ES) — a consulting and curatorial platform. Starting in April 2025, she takes on the artistic direction of Materiais Diversos and its festival. Since 2024, she has also been part of the artistic team of the new Something Great Arts Centre (DE), collaborating with Rui Silveira, River Lin, and Ash Bulayev in defining its curatorial framework. Additionally, she coordinates the Artistic Research Module at ArtEZ – Bachelor in Arts / Dance Artist.
Between 2018 and 2024, she was programmer and later artistic director of the Teatro Municipal do Porto, DDD – Festival Dias da Dança, and CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva, where she left a transformative legacy. Her impact goes beyond curation: she is dramaturg of Marco da Silva Ferreira’s new creation, Fcking Future — premiering at the Biennale de la Danse de Lyon in 2025; was a jury member for the Portuguese Performing Arts Platform (2023 and 2025) and the La Caixa / O Espaço do Tempo Grants (2023 and 2024); and served as a nominator for the SEDA – Salaviza European Dance Award by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
As a choreographer, Cristina views her work as an act of resistance and affection, exploring themes related to social and political movements and their connection to the performative body in the intimacy of the theater. Her work was featured in the Portugal que Dança series (RTP2, Ep. 02), and her most recent solo, [O SISTEMA], premiered in 2023 and continues touring through 2025. Since 2010, Cristina has been internationally teaching Flying Low and Passing Through techniques by David Zambrano, with a somatic and non-conventional approach, offering workshops that reflect her artistic practice. She also teaches in the Expanded Contemporary Dance program at the Amsterdam University of the Arts (NL) and at various other universities and dance companies.
M/6 – 30-40 min
May 31 and Jun 1 / Fundação de Serralves
Artistic Direction and Choreography: Cristina Planas Leitão
Choreographic Assistance and Co-Creation: Daniela Cruz
Performance and Co-Creation: Rita Martins Ferreira, Cali Ramos Osuna, Carolina Maia Soares, Clara Escudero, Cristiana Ferreira, Daria Yeremenko, Janne Schröder, Juliette de Raymond, Lola Kabina, Louis Martin, Mafalda da Silva Cardoso, Mariana Coelho Fernandes, Mathilde Granier, Nataly Bellomia, Nuno Pinto, Olga Maria Xenaki, Patrícia Alexandra Santos Bandarrinha, Pedro Oliveira, Sabrina Baranda, Sara Beira.