Words by Florence Nicholls.
Marco da Silva Ferreira made The Rose Prize shortlist in 2025 for his work CARAÇA, and is now part way through a European tour of his new work, F*cking Future. Ferreira and company will perform on London’s Sadlers Wells East stage on 4-6th of June. As this leg of the tour commences, Dance Art Journal asked the choreographer to expand on how this project came to be, and what it feels like to perform. F*cking Future is a marathon: 70 minutes of heat, sweat and rhythm.
Ferreira explores the dynamics of the over-militarised body and its connection to toxic masculinity in modern society. Ferreira comments, “Art can become a way of creating collective encounters and of searching for the meaning of dance and the performing body in relation to the world we are living in.”
F*cking Future switches between military precision and club culture- two worlds with very different relationships to the body. “The main objective” – said Ferreira – “was to create a macro-choreography in which organisation, discipline, metric precision and formation are gradually pierced by a micro-choreography where the individual, gesture, eroticism and sensitivity become increasingly prominent.”
Before dedicating his practice to the Performing Arts, Ferreira studied physiotherapy in Lisbon. He comes from a self-taught movement background, referencing the writhing, pulsating rhythms found on all types of club dancefloors. The energy of the scene permeates throughout Ferreira’s choreography. It’s a catharsis. Ferreira describes dance as, “a tool for liberation.” He continued, “[It’s] a friction against systems of productivity, and a means of self-expression.”
In F*cking Future, Ferreira performs alongside seven dancers in a space that’s part fight ring, part museum, part kiosk. This warped reality seems intentionally busy; almost impossible to fit on one stage. The cast perform in the round. This type of configuration is metaphoric. It “refracts whatever is placed within it; Like a crystal on a board, a digital hologram, a museum artefact, or a mirage. The metaphors within the work are extremely important.”
F*cking Future’s landscape is complex and psychological. Talking about the making of the work, Ferreira explained: “I didn’t want to mimic a single recognisable place. Finding an abstract setting helped me to bring a universal context to the piece.”
An electric pulse pierces through the scattered landscape as the sound score builds from 60 to 240 BPM. Imagine the pace of your heartbeat or the tick of a clock quickening, riding an unrelenting rhythm. Your body is in flux and you are anything but standing still. Each night Ferreira walks off stage full of adrenaline.
“It takes me several hours to come back down.”
“That’s mainly because the physical and emotional dimensions of the piece are so deeply connected. We almost need to exhaust ourselves physically in order to access an honest emotional layer, without having to resort to figurative theatricality.”
“Curiously, though, once the piece reaches 240 BPM, it becomes the lightest and most beautiful part of the work- at least for me.”
*After the Friday night show, a late night party will take over The Dance Floor and Foyer. Ferreira and the company invite you to join. Header image by João Octávio.