Susana Domingos Gaspar

Artist statement

Susana Domingos Gaspar (1980, Torres Novas).
I graduated in Dance/Performance at Escola Superior de Dança (2002), Choreography in the Gulbenkian Creativity and Artistic Creation Program, and in Dance in the Community at Fórum Dança. I also postgraduated in Fasciatherapy / Somatology.
The Gulbenkian Creativity and Artistic Creation Program was designed to create opportunities for the young portuguese artists to study with the best international artists, without having to go out of their country. I contacted with Matilde Monnier, Lia Rodrigues, Loïc Touzé, Lia Nelson, Anne Collode and Laurence Louppe, Lisa Nelson, Francesca Lattuada, amoung others.
I worked with several portuguese choreographers and creators including Né Barros, Madalena Victorino, Ainhoa Vidal, Marina Nabais, Filipa Francisco, Vera Alvelos, Aldara Bizarro and Sílvia Real.

As a dancer I worked a lot with communities and projects with participants, probably because I was always recognized as a dancer that could easily create strategies of empathy. For me, it is absolutely fundamental to face another human being as equal, without any form of level between us.

Since 2012 I have been dancing in the project “A Viagem” (“The Journey”), by Filipa Francisco – a project with traditional dance groups – that has taken me through the country, working with rural communities, in small villages. In this context I got in contact with a diverse repertoire of ancient dances which contributed to the formation of an embodied archive in me, as a dancer.
That experience drove into a reflection about what can be a Portuguese dance, not so elitist but grounded on the richness of ancestral poor populations related to earth labour; but at the same time it led me to confront myself with the limits of the vision of a Portuguese white and heteronormative dance. For that reason I am now learning and practicing other forms of urban dances, strongly related to an afro descendent origins and a queer influence. Is it possible in a country like Portugal, with a colonialist past that is not questioned enough, to create a deconstruction of the dances by letting them be touched by all the bodies already present among us?
I assisted Costanza Givone in “Tempo rói” and “Exposição”, and Manuela Pedroso in “Planalto”. As an author, I choreographed “Register” (2005); “Enleio” (2006); “Trees connect birds to the earth” (2007); “It was as if the ground swallowed her” and “The chestnut rind” (2009); “I die where I am trapped” (2010); “An artist at home” (2013); “Ostinato Cantabile” (2015); “Lava” and “Ka” (2016); “Catalága” (2017); “Classe do Jaime” (2018), “Housing Collective” (2021) and the choreography for children “As Amigas da Gaspar” (2022, “Kasper’s friends”).
In the last years I have received the financial support of Teatro Virgínia, FIMFA Festival, Artemrede, Materiais Diversos, GDA, and the Ministry of Culture (DGArtes). My creative work has been produced by Mundo em Reboliço Cultural Association.
I collaborated with Teatro de Montemuro and Amarelo Silvestre, in the theater area.
I develop pedagogical work since 2002, having started to work in the dance field by teaching creative dance classes for children and youngsters in my hometown. Later, in Lisbon, I collaborated with Madalena Victorino at Centro de Pedagogia e Animação, at Centro Cultural de Belém, implementing workshops for children. With her supervision, I also taught in a Professional Artistic and Cultural Course created in Casa Pia de Lisboa (an institution with an history of work with orphans and families with economic difficulties, and social integration issues).

Between 2015 and 2018, I also worked at Museu Municipal Carlos Reis, as a cultural mediator, implementing a plan of audiences’ development.
In 2014, I integrated the residency and mentoring program of the Polverigi Festival, in Italy, with Cláudia Dias, Francesca Lattuada, and Iris Karayan. I have also studied with Emmanuelle Huynh, at Minde, during the Festival Materiais Diversos, in 2016.
Presently, I am attending the Somatic Education Program in Body-Mind Centering, organized by Movimiento Atlas, in Zaragoza.

I have also developed political, union and associative work, throughout the years. Presently the experience I have gained in that field is more and more prominent in my work. I always look at what I do as a form of political speech. With the work “Housing Collective”, I became a Housing Activist and started thinking about my relationship with communities through art as a strongly social and political motivated encounter, an opportunity to raise questions, confront the system, and maybe even the limits of our solidarity.
Also, something that has been extremely important for me recently is how the works, themselves, show me my limits as a human being, exposing my privileges, the structural racism of my education, and the contradictions of my role as choreographer, in relation with the other workers, during the creative process. What do we do when the work offers us ethical questions? Is it possible to find means of absorbing the conflicts raised during the process into the artistic final product? Is it possible to share the inner process’s dilemmas with the public?

I also sing in an amateur choir, centered on the repertoire of the Portuguese modernist composer Fernando Lopes Graça.
Finally, I am the mother of Leonor, and she is the center of my creation, making me think about what for me is important to question in the world where I am raising her, but also motivating my ideas and reflections on what I may be working on.