From its base in Rio de Janeiro, Deborah Colker Dance Company has given over 2,000 performances in 40 countries since its foundation thirty years’ ago. The company has received some of the most highly coveted awards for dance in the world, including the Prix Benois de la Danse and the Laurence Olivier Award.
Artistic Director and Choreographer Deborah Colker combines elements of sport, ballet and circus to create exciting, visual and relatable works of contemporary dance. She has a flair for the mechanics of movement, pushing her dancers to the edge, and makes bold design choices. Colker has created for Cirque du Soleil, the Rio de Janeiro Olympics opening ceremony, and in 2022, the Scottish Opera presented Ainadamar by Osvaldo Golijov, the first opera directed by Deborah, reprised at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in Autumn 2024.
Dog Without Feathers is Deborah Colker’s full length 2017 creation inspired by the poem Cão Sem Plumas by Brazilian poet João Cabral de Melo Neto. Set in a landscape blighted by environmental damage, it delivers a powerful message about climate change and poverty. Integral to the piece is its full stage backdrop film by Cláudio Assis created in the Capibaribe River in the Brazilian northeastern state of Pernambuco where Colker and the dancers spent nearly a month tracing the river to the sea and interacting with the people who live there. Some of the most powerful images in the production are in the film, where dancers roll in acres of parched riverbed or perch in dead trees. There is a muscular, animalistic quality to the movement language on stage and the indigenous beating heart of the piece is reflected in ritualistic dancing and the patchwork score of samba, mangue beat, jongo and kuduro.
Deborah Colker’s most recent piece, Rite is an adaptation of The Rite of Spring. Inspired by ancestral visions about the origins of the world, Colker – whose heritage is part Russian, part Brazilian – uses the artistic concept of anthropophagy to present the Russian work in a Brazilian context, adding Brazilian sounds and rhythms to Stravinsky‘s score. The art direction and set design are by Colker’s long-standing collaborator Gringo Cardia.
Selected Scenes: Dog Without Feathers Rite
Upcoming tour dates in Europe
26-29 March Tivoli BBVA Theater Lisbon, Portugal Rite
2 April Teo Otto Theater Remscheid, Germany Dog Without Feathers
4 April ParkTheater Iserlohn, Germany Dog Without Feathers
8 April Forum Leverkusen Leverkusen, Germany Dog Without Feathers
10 April Festhalle Viersen Viersen, Germany Dog Without Feathers
13 April Admiralpalast Berlin, Germany Dog Without Feathers
