In thematic continuity with a dramaturgical logic that draws from each previous edition, Linha de Fuga proposes a new theme every year. The fifth edition, taking place in November 2025, will be dedicated to "The Performativity of Friendship."

We live in an increasingly fragmented and accelerated world. We lack time to cultivate deeper states of being and context. We are “friends” with everyone on social media, just as we hate many without knowing why. We see unethical politicians use the word “friendship” as a bargaining chip, while relationships deteriorate in favor of an ever more rampant capitalism.That’s why we propose returning to the essence of friendship, without the stability or safety of a social contract, without the crystallization of a like, love, lol, or hate forgotten five minutes later.

Let’s speak of friendship as an act of resistance and care, a practice rooted in the three-dimensionality of planetary presence, in continuity over time, and in its ongoing cultivation. We speak of the performativity of friendship because we understand it as something enacted — in being together, in vulnerability, and in the willingness to be exposed to the other, as the Catalan philosopher Marina Garcés suggests.

Friendship deals with uncertainty, fragility, and risk, but also reclaims the idea of community. It is not a currency, but rather,  to paraphrase bell hooks, a radical practice of care, an ethics of being together, with the other and with their difference, their vulnerability, and our own ability to be consciously present, to enter a system of exchange  of fluids and ideas without hierarchies. Friendship is performative because it is made and remade each day, through each choice, with the awareness and care it demands.

The performativity of friendship is a political act, inviting us to move from individualism to collective space. In embracing friendship as an ethical practice, we commit to others and resist a system that wants us isolated, fearful, and closed off. Friendship is, above all, an extension of our own freedom, allowing us to be vulnerable, to exist in community, and to risk encountering the other without conforming to predictable norms. It allows for improvisation, and teaches us to embrace the unknown.

We also aim to make the stay of international artists more sustainable by encouraging them to remain in the city longer, not only to engage with the laboratory processes, but also to take part in conversations and meetings that delve deeper into the edition’s central theme.Linha de Fuga is a contemporary dance festival, but we also value opening space to other artistic fields and welcoming hybrid formats that allow for different interpretations of the proposed concepts.

This year’s program includes: Mucha Muchacha (ES), challenging Spanish dance traditions from a feminist perspective; Marta Blanco (ES),  a 2018 lab artist and 2024 resident, exploring the role of collectivity in a society of control; Sónia Baptista (PT), in a drag king version, reinterpreting patriarchal Catholic paradigms; Antonio Tagliarini (IT), reflecting on the importance of solidarity through failure; Adriana Reyes (ES), inviting us into a sensory experience with plants. We also feature city-based artists such as: Jan Fedinger (DE/PT), guiding us through a journey of light and sound; Margarida Cabral (lab artist in 2022, resident in 2023) and Francisco Correia (PT), questioning and encountering the concept of time.

This year, instead of commissioning new local creations, we launched an open call for curators, inviting them to share their perspectives on what local artists are doing.And finally, we continue our collaboration with Catarina Silva and Tatiana Moura from the CES Observatory on Masculinities, curating a program of conversations on friendship.We also open the festival and laboratory early, creating a bridge between last year’s edition and the present one through the exhibition “Mistura #8”, inaugurated in September in partnership with the Botanical Garden of the University of Coimbra.