F*cking Future

Innovative choreographer Marco da Silva Ferreira, one of the four nominees for Sadler’s Wells’ The Rose 2024 award, retired from professional swimming at the age of 16. Yet he did not abandon physical activity, a need for him tied to pleasure and self-esteem, which he also found in dance. He first approached dance through urban styles: hip-hop, popping, breakdancing, and house dance. At 20, he deepened his exploration of this form of expression and eventually found his way into contemporary dance, beginning a journey that led him from Portugal, where he could not find the works he longed to discover, to beyond his country’s borders. Since his debut as a choreographer in 2013, he has forged a career in which urban dance alternates with ballet, and the world of discos and nightclubs intersects with folklore. And it is this story of Marco da Silva Ferreira—a swimmer turned multidisciplinary dancer, that unfolds in F*cking Future.

With this piece, the choreographer and dancer continues the exploration he began with Carcaça (2022) and Bisonte (2024), in which he questioned masculinity. Now, he broadens his focus, celebrating the body through a journey across themes such as militarisation, virility, and violence, and their relationship to patriarchy. On a quadrangular stage, which could well evoke the ring of a boxing arena around which spectators will gather, a group of eight dancers, including da Silva himself, embody various male archetypes. Through these, the choreographer denounces the violent patriarchal system and points to its vulnerable zones. Within this movement, he evokes the era of the Portuguese dictatorship and reclaims the subversive power of dance in the face of a regime that controlled bodies.

Queer figures, male dancers, erotic dancers... all appear in succession within this world dominated by patriarchal and militant forces, against which Marco da Silva Ferreira offers an alternative vision of the future, blending African urban dance with Portuguese folklore. And he does so in a confrontational manner, rejecting naïve universalism and the utopia of harmonious coexistence.