ANITO
Justin Talplacido Shoulder & the Future Folklore Collective (PH / AU)
(National Premiere)

For Early Filipinos, like many still today, It is believed that a life force or soul inhabits all entities, animate or inanimate. These spirits are called Anitos.

The work ANITO, is a future folklore informed by the collective’s ancestry, queer embodiment and diverse history of practice. The work centres the importance of nature spirits, intuiting with them as guides towards imagining possible parallel futures.

In the performance, wondrous ecologies emerge from a shifting, fertile landscape crafted by hands and activated by bodies. Megafauna dance deep time. A spectre appears charting the trajectory of humanity and setting it in a reverse spiral. Roots from the ancestral underworld create cracks in colonial foundations. Seasons change, in a world of sheer terror and tremendous beauty.

Honouring their roots in Sydney’s underground queer and diasporic club scenes, the collective behind ANITO build on their shared histories of costume, puppetry, drag, dance, and experimental electronic music to re-imagine myths and stories for the now.

ANITO marks the Portuguese debut of Justin Talplacido Shoulder’s work, in partnership with Teatro Municipal do Porto. The show will then head to the Southbank Arts Centre in London, continuing its European tour.

Attention! - ANITO contains nudity, haze, loud music and sudden loud noises, abrupt lighting changes, low lights and lights that change colour and intensity.