Métropole
Dance
Teatro Municipal de Vila do Conde [Sala 1]25 Sept. (Fri.) | 21:30
Alongside Philippe Foch on snare drum, choreographer and dancer Volmir Cordeiro presents a punk, effervescent dance opera, conceived during the health crisis. Cordeiro is permeated by the issues of the metropolis and ultimately comes to embody it. The city, which he perceives as both central and dynamic, is full of ambivalences. It is a space that promotes both freedom and surveillance. It tends to absorb individuals, yet constantly selects among them. It celebrates new technologies that are ever more alienating.
Driven by percussion, his dance transforms into a wild, carnivalesque allegory - frenzied, masked, hooded, disguised, and robotic. It unfolds as a metaphor for urban life: frantic, chaotic, yet also vibrantly beautiful. Through expressive movement, Volmir Cordeiro questions our place within this metropolis, where everyone struggles to assert their existence. His performance is striking in its intensity and determination. Transgressive, it claims total freedom, far from all norms.
volmircordeiro.com
facebook.com/volmirc
instagram.com/volmircordeiro
Concept, choreography, performance: Volmir Cordeiro | Percussion: Philippe Foch | Sound design: Aria De la Celle | Lighting design: Abigalai Fowler | Costume design & creation: Clément Picot & Dat Vu | Costume production: Coco Blanvillain | Set design realization, based on an original idea by Volmir Cordeiro: Hervé Cherblanc | Video realization, based on an original idea by Volmir Cordeiro: Margaux Vendassi | Lighting revision, stage management: Bia Kaysel | Sound technician: Bastien Raute | Artistic advisors: Bruno Pace, Carolina Campos, Paca Tim Faraus, Marcela Santander Corvalan | Acknowledgements: Paul B. Preciado, Guillaume Leingre | Production: Donna Volcan | Production management & development: Audrey Chazelle | Administration & logistics: Doriane Trouboul, Daphnée Gonçalves | Co-productions: Points Communs, Nouvelle Scène Nationale Cergy-Pontoise / Val d’Oise; La Briqueterie – CDCN du Val-de-Marne, Vitry; Festival d’Automne à Paris; Théâtre La Vignette / Universidade Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3; ICI—Centre chorégraphique national Montpellier Occitanie / Direcção Artística de Christian Rizzo (residência de estúdio); Fondation Royaumont | Support: Théâtre Paul Éluard (TPE) de Bezons, espaço de interesse nacional para a arte e a criação – Dança; Graner, Centro de creación de danza y artes vivas (Barcelona).
The company is funded by DRAC Île-de-France.
Volmir Cordeiro is a Brazilian dancer, choreographer, and researcher born in 1987, whose career lies at the intersection of artistic creation and pedagogy. Initially trained in theatre in Brazil, he quickly turned to contemporary dance, collaborating with major figures of the Brazilian scene, including Lia Rodrigues, Alejandro Ahmed, and Cristina Moura. These early experiences shaped an approach to the body already marked by an attention to social dynamics and marginal forms of expression.
Based in France since 2011, he continued his training at the National Center for Contemporary Dance (CNDC) in Angers under the direction of Emmanuelle Huynh, where he developed a rigorous practice combining physical intensity and conceptual depth. Alongside his career as a performer—with artists such as Xavier Le Roy, Latifa Laâbissi, Robyn Orlin, and Rodrigo Garcia - he pursued academic research, completing a PhD at Paris 8 University. His theoretical work, focused on figures of marginality in contemporary dance, deeply informs his artistic practice.
His first choreographic works form a cycle of solos - Ciel (2012), Inês (2014), and Rue (2015) - exploring often invisible bodily presences at the intersection of social and political realms. Through these pieces, Cordeiro asserts a singular choreographic language, marked by raw physical intensity and attention to unstable, porous, transforming states of the body.
He later moved toward group works such as L’œil, la bouche et le reste (2017), Trottoir (2019), Metropole (2021), Érosion (2022, for Les Ballets de Lorraine), and Abri (2023), where the group becomes a space of tension, circulation, and reconfiguration of identities.
In 2018, he founded the company Donna Volcan, conceived as a space for research and creation, developing an aesthetic of emergence and metamorphosis. His more recent works, such as Parterre (2025) and Cher Fou, continue this exploration, combining bodily energy, popular imaginaries, and cultural heritage. His choreographic gesture emerges as both poetic and political, attentive to forms of resistance and the expressive power of bodies.
As an artist-researcher, Volmir Cordeiro also teaches internationally. The publication of his book Ex-Corpo (Éditions Carnets, CND, 2019) extends his reflection on marginality and the role of the body in contemporary practices.
His work, now widely recognized on the international choreographic scene, received the SACD “Young Talent in Choreography” award in 2021, highlighting the originality and commitment of his artistic approach. He has been regularly invited and supported by leading institutions such as the National Dance Center, La Briqueterie CDCN du
Val-de-Marne, and Points Communs, where he was an associated artist.
In 2026, Volmir Cordeiro becomes an associated artist of the Master Exerce program at Agora – CCN Montpellier.
Driven by percussion, his dance transforms into a wild, carnivalesque allegory - frenzied, masked, hooded, disguised, and robotic. It unfolds as a metaphor for urban life: frantic, chaotic, yet also vibrantly beautiful. Through expressive movement, Volmir Cordeiro questions our place within this metropolis, where everyone struggles to assert their existence. His performance is striking in its intensity and determination. Transgressive, it claims total freedom, far from all norms.
volmircordeiro.com
facebook.com/volmirc
instagram.com/volmircordeiro
Concept, choreography, performance: Volmir Cordeiro | Percussion: Philippe Foch | Sound design: Aria De la Celle | Lighting design: Abigalai Fowler | Costume design & creation: Clément Picot & Dat Vu | Costume production: Coco Blanvillain | Set design realization, based on an original idea by Volmir Cordeiro: Hervé Cherblanc | Video realization, based on an original idea by Volmir Cordeiro: Margaux Vendassi | Lighting revision, stage management: Bia Kaysel | Sound technician: Bastien Raute | Artistic advisors: Bruno Pace, Carolina Campos, Paca Tim Faraus, Marcela Santander Corvalan | Acknowledgements: Paul B. Preciado, Guillaume Leingre | Production: Donna Volcan | Production management & development: Audrey Chazelle | Administration & logistics: Doriane Trouboul, Daphnée Gonçalves | Co-productions: Points Communs, Nouvelle Scène Nationale Cergy-Pontoise / Val d’Oise; La Briqueterie – CDCN du Val-de-Marne, Vitry; Festival d’Automne à Paris; Théâtre La Vignette / Universidade Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3; ICI—Centre chorégraphique national Montpellier Occitanie / Direcção Artística de Christian Rizzo (residência de estúdio); Fondation Royaumont | Support: Théâtre Paul Éluard (TPE) de Bezons, espaço de interesse nacional para a arte e a criação – Dança; Graner, Centro de creación de danza y artes vivas (Barcelona).
The company is funded by DRAC Île-de-France.
Volmir Cordeiro is a Brazilian dancer, choreographer, and researcher born in 1987, whose career lies at the intersection of artistic creation and pedagogy. Initially trained in theatre in Brazil, he quickly turned to contemporary dance, collaborating with major figures of the Brazilian scene, including Lia Rodrigues, Alejandro Ahmed, and Cristina Moura. These early experiences shaped an approach to the body already marked by an attention to social dynamics and marginal forms of expression.
Based in France since 2011, he continued his training at the National Center for Contemporary Dance (CNDC) in Angers under the direction of Emmanuelle Huynh, where he developed a rigorous practice combining physical intensity and conceptual depth. Alongside his career as a performer—with artists such as Xavier Le Roy, Latifa Laâbissi, Robyn Orlin, and Rodrigo Garcia - he pursued academic research, completing a PhD at Paris 8 University. His theoretical work, focused on figures of marginality in contemporary dance, deeply informs his artistic practice.
His first choreographic works form a cycle of solos - Ciel (2012), Inês (2014), and Rue (2015) - exploring often invisible bodily presences at the intersection of social and political realms. Through these pieces, Cordeiro asserts a singular choreographic language, marked by raw physical intensity and attention to unstable, porous, transforming states of the body.
He later moved toward group works such as L’œil, la bouche et le reste (2017), Trottoir (2019), Metropole (2021), Érosion (2022, for Les Ballets de Lorraine), and Abri (2023), where the group becomes a space of tension, circulation, and reconfiguration of identities.
In 2018, he founded the company Donna Volcan, conceived as a space for research and creation, developing an aesthetic of emergence and metamorphosis. His more recent works, such as Parterre (2025) and Cher Fou, continue this exploration, combining bodily energy, popular imaginaries, and cultural heritage. His choreographic gesture emerges as both poetic and political, attentive to forms of resistance and the expressive power of bodies.
As an artist-researcher, Volmir Cordeiro also teaches internationally. The publication of his book Ex-Corpo (Éditions Carnets, CND, 2019) extends his reflection on marginality and the role of the body in contemporary practices.
His work, now widely recognized on the international choreographic scene, received the SACD “Young Talent in Choreography” award in 2021, highlighting the originality and commitment of his artistic approach. He has been regularly invited and supported by leading institutions such as the National Dance Center, La Briqueterie CDCN du
Val-de-Marne, and Points Communs, where he was an associated artist.
In 2026, Volmir Cordeiro becomes an associated artist of the Master Exerce program at Agora – CCN Montpellier.