Miguel Cunha is a music teacher with a background in theater and dance.
Over the years, he has built an artistic career based on projects that mainly involve the local community, such as musicals and dance shows.
He is currently a teacher and artistic director, and states that in his daily life he tries to be attentive to all the signs he receives as a source of inspiration for his works.
Here, we will highlight one of his most remarkable projects: Companhia Vareira (CV).
According to Diário de Coimbra (2018), Companhia was founded in 2010 on the day that José Américo Sá Pinto, then councilman of the municipality and president of the Ovar Carnival Foundation, invited Miguel Cunha to create a tribute show to the celebration of Ovar’s Carnival first decade. Miguel embraced the project, inviting people associated with the region’s samba groups and schools, which resulted in a successful final show. The adventure couldn’t end there, so CV was born, and today it also includes an academy dedicated to music, dance, and well-being. It’s a captivating project, he says, with amateur artists of various ages with one thing in common: a love of dance and the performing arts.
Miguel recognizes the lack of time and a low financial return as the biggest challenges in the art world. On the other hand, he believes that the lack of funds is the ideal motto to reinvent ourselves and create new ways to achieve our goals. And this venturous spirit is visible in everything that Companhia Vareira sets out to do.
It was within the CV that they presented their first performance in a pandemic context, “Recomeçar” (To Start Over). The show premiered online, which was a first for the group. It was difficult to create a concept in which the message could be transmitted in such a different and new framework. One of the most difficult aspects was practicing with all of the constraints, such as videoconference rehearsals. But in the end, they presented a unique and beautiful show with a powerful message. However, according to himself, they still lacked the special glow they were used to: “we lacked the nerves, the curtain opening, the applause, and the immediate reaction of the audience”.
But those days are over, and as their journey asserts, there is nothing that can stop them, quite the contrary. Throughout its 12 years of existence, countless shows have been performed, many memories have been recorded, and numerous people have left their mark on CV. Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go and to live.
CV is more than a group of people united by art. It is a unified family; it is an academy where 160 people a week pass through, who fill any stage with music, energy, and emotions through their great commitment and effort. The only thing we can ask is that Companhia Vareira keeps on lighting up the streets of the county, impacting the public, welcoming the people who experience it, and, of course, echoing their motto: “Here I am happier”.
