Rita Marcalo

Rita Marcalo (she/her) is a Portuguese dancer/choreographer, currently based in Ireland. She is the Artistic Director of Instant Dissidence, a dance company based in Cloughjordan Ecovillage. As a socially and ecologically engaged company, Instant Dissidence foregrounds the role of dance as a social engine. The company’s work resists the idea of art as an object produced by a special kind of person called the ‘artist’, and work is often co-created in dialogue with (and performed by) non-professional artists about issues which matter to them. In October 2018 the United Nations warned that humans had 12 years to create a new civilization in order to avoid a climate and biodiversity catastrophe, and Rita made a pledge: over the next 12 years Instant Dissidence would make 12 works, each acting as a mirror to society as to the direction of travel.

2022 project highlights: SlowMo was one of 19 projects EU-wide selected by Perform Europe, Marcalo was the selected Irish artist by CROWD – International Dance Exchange (residency in Finland) and by the Centre Culturel Irlandais (residency in Paris), the company’s work was the subject of a feature piece in European dance magazine Springback, and Marcalo presented at three international arts & climate change conferences (Sweden, Denmark and Italy). In Ireland support from the Arts Council enabled the development of two new dance & food activism concepts, Marcalo was commissioned to deliver presentations as part of the Places Matter Arts Council conference and Creative Europe Ireland’s Culture & Climate event, and Create commissioned Marcalo to write for their upcoming publication.