During her residency at Moussem, Diego Bragà will be working on the project WE AT THE NIGHTCLUB SUFFER TOGETHER. At the height of DISCOTHÈQUE, hearts of Latin American immigrants and African Americans, WHOLE or BROKEN, had in common the hopeful LOOP of seventies GLAMOUR. It was the luster and power of “marginality”, it was the pre-AIDS era, it was the collective movement that redefined the words “Pleasure”, “Dance” and “Sensuality”. … at the height of discotheque, not only the most danceable songs were on the charts. At the end of the party, sad songs were played for the future broken hearts.
WE AT THE NIGHTCLUB SUFFER TOGETHER is research for a QUEER OPERA- it's a androgynous, utopian, political, and phantasmagoric space for the solitary dance (body/verb/spirit of our GHOST-files and memory-MEDIUM who occupied the architecture of nightclubs at their peak). WE AT THE NIGHTCLUB SUFFER TOGETHER will be a contemporary OPERA to welcome broken hearts at the end of the night to actualize the idea of a beautiful future together.
This artistic residency is part of the annual exchange programme between Moussem and the Lisbon-based arts association and festival Alkantara. The exchange began in 2023 and wants to support the development of new narratives.
Bio
Diego Bragà (she/they) received a lot of Love from her Ancestors. When she was an effeminate child, her grandma Leny, in a forest, gave her flowers and taught her how to pray for Nature.
She's a technical and intuitive trans-non-binary Luso-Brazilian artist – theatremaker, filmmaker, composer, and dramaturg – born in Belo Horizonte (BR) and based in Lisbon (PT). Diego is one of the emerging artists selected for Common Stories - Common LAB - to explore the shifting notions of diversity in a changing European society.
In 2021, through an autobiographical film, she received a fellowship for young filmmakers from the Sundance Institute which resulted in her film Think About The Beautiful Future Ahead, which can be seen online as part of the Op-Docs series of The New York Times.
As a theatremaker, she received five awards, including the Culture Award from the Ministry of Culture during Dilma Rousseff's government, as one of the representatives of young contemporary Brazilian artists. In Brazil, she founded a queer platform called MADAME TEATRO and worked as director assistant for Grupo Galpão. In Europe, as an actress, she worked with directors such as Tiago Rodrigues, Jérôme Bel, Susan Worsfold, and Mickael de Oliveira.
As singer and composer, she has two avant-pop EPs: SUPERPUTA SPIRITUAL (2023), about her spiritual, sensual, and chaotic gender transition, and Geography of Love (2022), which features songs honoring her gay ancestry and victims of AIDS. The EPs are available on almost all digital music platforms.
She remains praying for Nature and attentive to listening to the magic of the Universe, striving for a beautiful future for everyone (and everything).
http://adiegobraga.com
https://www.instagram.com/adiegobragaoficial/
