OFELIA JARL ORTEGA☾ Casino

Casino is what salsa dancing has been called in Cuba, referring to the place where you go to dance. Casino is also the title of this piece. In Casino, Swedish-Chilean Ofelia Jarl Ortega, Nina Sandino from Nicaragua and Jao Moon from Colombia, move on a fictional dance floor set in a Latin American club for couples dancing. Each dancer brings with them their own relationship to salsa, letting it reverberate in their body through a repertoire of historical and personal memories. By the engagement of the dancers and the sounds of their steps, the music is present in its absence. In a subtle, restrained, detailed and playful way, the three dancers connect, and fail to connect, simultaneously.

Choreography: Ofelia Jarl Ortega, in close collaboration with the performers.

Performers: Jao Moon, Nina Sandino, Ofelia Jarl Ortega

Lighting Design: Johan Sundén

Dramaturgy: Andrea Rodrigo, Quim Bigas

Costume: Erik Annerborn

Photo: Milja Rossi

Trailer: Karl-Oskar Gustafsson

Production: Terry Johnson, (Johnson & Bergsmark)

Co-production: Dansehallerne, MDT, BIT Teatergarasjen

Residency support: höjden studios, Stockholm and Dansplats Skog, Stråtjära

With support from: The Swedish Art Grants Committee, The Swedish Arts Council and Stockholms Stad

Ofelia Jarl Ortega (1990) is a Chilean-Swedish choreographer and performer based in Stockholm. Her work centers around vulnerability and femininity, where questions around power and group dynamics are at the core for her investigations. She holds a diploma from The Royal Swedish Ballet School (2010) and a MA in Choreography from Uniarts Stockholm (2014). Her works have been shown at venues such as ImPulsTanz (Vienna), MDT (Stockholm), Arsenic (Lausanne), and Moving in November (Helsinki).

Mula – Performing Arts

from sunset on day 20 to sunrise on day 22 — March 2026, Porto (PT)

An animal between species, representative of hybridity and resistance, ℳ𝓊𝓁𝒶 asserts itself as a symbol of recklessness, crossbreeding, and transgression. A collective body that insists. ℳ𝓊𝓁𝒶 was born from the desire to create a weekend festival gathering, focusing on dance and its hybrid languages, crossing performative and sound practices, continuous readings, astral and oracular, as well as temporal, bodily, collective, and situated experiences. Intertwining spaces, people, and rhythms, ℳ𝓊𝓁𝒶 affirms conviviality as an artistic and political practice, understanding the gathering as a place of listening, sharing, and transformation.

ℳ𝓊𝓁𝒶 proposes a temporary territory for experimentation and sharing, bringing together performances, concerts, workshops, readings, and meetings in different spaces throughout the city of Porto over the course of a weekend. The pilot edition brings together seven independent venues in the city of Porto and 21 artists in a celebration of the spring equinox. On this day of the solar cycle, when the Sun shines directly on the Equator and day and night are in balance, through a journey through the daytime and nighttime hours, we focus our attention on the pleasures, encounters, possibilities, and affections that the bodies on stage produce and move.

All performances, workshop and concert during the ℳ𝓊𝓁𝒶 weekend are free of charge and operate on a first-come, first-served basis, with no reservations or advance ticketing. Each venue opens to the public 30 minutes before the performance and has limited capacity. Although entry is free, we invite audiences to make donations (pay what you can) to support our partner venues and, in part, solidarity organisations in central Portugal. Club ℳ𝓊𝓁𝒶, food at each venue, as well as tarot readings and natal chart sessions, are paid directly on site. More information on the “information & accessibility” page.