Even if we want to celebrate, we need to do so with the honesty of someone telling a biased story. A Salto is dead, long live A Salto! We spent half a dozen years driven by the utopia of a better world, through and with contemporary arts: celebrating diversity and the fragility of love. We prettied up the interior, offering our hearts - it was the only way not to be alone. During these six years, we've welcomed more than 300 artists, with whom we've sat at the same table, under the baton of Vitorica. We've travelled the city and, as if each project were a tree, we've never tired of planting. We planted trees everywhere in the city and in the hearts of the people of El Salvador. From Cape Verde, the USA, Israel, Mexico, Poland, Japan, Spain, France, Brazil and Portugal. We planted so many trees, because trees provide shade, because they provide food, because they provide firewood. It matters little whether we are the ones who pick the fruit or admire the flowers. Life always survives us. The shock of seeing a life that we thought was young interrupted - we wanted to look after you more, O Elvas, O Elvas. But we only know how to work as a team - in an extended team that embraces the diversity of others to find a common rhythm. We are now at the crossroads of the city: "What to do in the face of universal disorder?" (we ask ourselves, listening to Vera Duarte's verse). Without daring to answer, we dance. Perhaps this one-day programme, smaller than A Salto but just as strong, also anchored in love and a deep desire to develop projects that counteract cultural gentrification and actually re-signify the territory and the artists, is another way of posing the question. Let's start there: draw a perfect circle and watch, like someone who talks open-mouthed, looking for reason in the midst of doubt: what can a Festival do? Only after the purge can we face the projects that continue with us and that we accompany throughout the residencies, all of them grappling with exposed intimacies that tear us apart from our bittersweet sadness. Above all, we thank Batata, Rita and Rosy for their courage in joining us to honour the end of A Salto. The city of Elvas will eventually have been taken over.

M A T I N A  

10.30am - MAEE (Museum of Archaeology)
and Ethnography of Elvas)
Largo da Sra. da Oliveira 17
FROM GRANNY TO TRENDY
Jorge Moita

P E R C U R S E

16.30 - Piedade Park
Av. da Piedade Road 17
WHAT A FESTIVAL CAN DO:
MUGGINGS, JUMPS, JOLTS
AND INCARCERATED MORTALS
19h00 - Sanctuary Square
of the Lord Jesus of Pity
Av. da Piedade Road 17
STARTING
Rita Carvalho (A/B Scholarship)
21h30 - MACE (Elvas Museum of Contemporary Art) - terrace
Rua da Cadeia
ALMOST SEA
Rosy Timas / Raiz di Polon
23.30 - CASA TANGENTE
Rua de Martim Mendes 19
MY INSIDES ARE EXPOSED, AND,
SO THEY START TO GROW
HAIRS ON THE HEART; FOR
PROTECT FROM THE SUN
Eduardo Batata and Pedro Costa
(Scholarship A/B)