In November 1966, Merce Cunningham’s dance company — and alongside the choreographer, his partner, the composer John Cage — came to Portugal for the first time. In those years, the country was ruled by an old dictatorship that left it culturally isolated and anachronistic, but there were people eager for openness and with the desire to disturb this stagnation. In this essay, the dancer, choreographer and editor João dos Santos Martins relates what happened in those surprising nights and how these novel shows were received. Art critics were divided between two opposite kinds of astonishment: one fuelled by incomprehension, the other by admiration. Artists such as Mário Cesariny and Ana Hatherly followed Cunningham and Cage, turning their presence into a manifesto. Among the Lisbon audience was the young Maria Filomena Molder, before she became a philosopher, who watched Cunningham’s choreography with the enthusiasm of someone witnessing a revelation. Alongside its historiographical value, this thorough research documents the awe produced by the unknown and shows how the artistic ruptures and revolutionary creations sent shock waves across the country. These inspired those who welcomed them with eager curiosity and exasperated those who were closed off in a self-sufficient attitude.
