TWO CENTURIES

“I have arrived too late on a century too old,” said Manuel Teixeira Gomes, marketer, writer and politician, born in 1862 in Lagos, Algarve. Cultured man, modern and refined personality, fascinated by the beauty of Art and Women, Teixeira Gomes lived between two centuries, one of the most agitated times of the Portuguese nation.

Like Aeneas, he too was a fugitive under target, yearning to tread land, wandering through two centuries, they were never really his, from the century of Helen of Troy and classics, and one that also is no longer our century.

One time it actually has been to all mankind. Manuel Teixeira Gomes would take over as President of the Republic on October 5, 1923.

However, always passionate about life, frequenter of the biggest and best museums and theatres in Europe, the politics would become for him an “inglorious sacrifice” and eventually away from their beloved homeland, exiled in Bougie, Algeria (a “Sintra close to the sea”), seizing, finally, the much coveted sand, until you find eternal rest, giving us an extraordinary work.

Through the language of dance, theatre, poetry, music and the arts, the Quorum Ballet celebrates the centenary of the establishment of the Republic at the same time promoting a renewed encounter with the life and work of one of the greatest personalities of the History of Portugal. A meeting that also lives us hungry to speak Portuguese.