Miguel meets Karima meets Miguel Meets Cairo tells the story of a joint venture which never materialized. Between 2004 and 2006, Egyptian choreographer Karima Mansour and Portuguese choreographer Miguel Pereira participated in several intercultural residency projects in Southern Europe, North Africa, and South America. During this period, they were invited to create a performance together. However, their cultural and personal differences led to difficulties, and in the end, they decided to each make solo performances. Both solos are presented one after the other at Festival Complicitats.


Hello Karima,

I'm sorry to not give you news sooner, but I actually had a very rushed time with all these travels and works so close. I've been thinking a lot in our collaboration and how things ends in Rio - for me at least - and I have a bizarre sensation of it.
I realize that our collaboration it's not a cultural but a personal problem, so my difficulty is more about dealing with you as a person than with your cultural frame. And it's not a problem of difficulty or fear or giving up. Usually, I like to work with difficult challenges, but I don't think that it's healthy to punish ourselves (at least myself).
(...) I'm sorry to be so direct. I would have liked that things went different, but I cannot change them. I hope that everything is going well with you, and i hope to hear from you soon.

Kiss, Miguel


Hello Miguel,

(...) I certainly agree with finding a way to continue this collaboration and deciding on whether we are going on with it. As for collaborating in a piece, I don't have a problem, nor do I feel that there should be. In my vision, we talked, we decided to experiment separately, a lot of good came out of it, and some things got clarified. I think we can continue to talk without holding grudges that will don't need to interfere with the process and make it impossible.
What am I saying? Well, if we decide to continue and collaborate, I think it will have to be through thick and thin (like a marriage)! I'm not trying to scare you, but I think to believe that everything would go nice and smooth is naive! The question is, how much are we tolerant of the other? How much of ourselves are we willing to put in? How much risk are we willing to take? How can we deal with our weaknesses? How much of those do we can recognize and admit? Is this process relevant to our artistic development? If Yes, why? If No, why?

Kisses, Karima

Karima Mansour is a choreographer, dancer and dance teacher from Cairo, Egypt. She graduated with both a B.A and a Masters degree in Contemporary Dance from the London Contemporary Dance School, London, England after completing her B.A in Film from the High Institute of Cinema, Academy of Arts in Cairo, Egypt. Upon her return to Egypt, she founded her company MAAT for Contemporary Dance in 1999, the first Independent dance company established in the country. Since then, she has created 20 full choreographic works that continue to be performed in various International festivals and more than 20 various collaborations in Theater and Film.

Miguel Pereira is a performance artist from Lisbon. His work has been presented across Europe, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile. As a performer, he worked with, among others, Jerôme Bel, Alain Buffard, Francisco Camacho and Vera Mantero. He attended The National Conservatory Dance School and the Higher School of Dance (ESD), in Lisbon. He received a scholarship from the Portuguese Ministry of Culture to continue his studies in Paris (Théâtre Contemporain de la Danse) and in New York. In 2000, he received the Revelation Prize José Ribeiro of the Portuguese Ministry of Culture and he Award Acarte/Madalena de Azeredo Perdigão of the Gulbenkian Foundation.