Artist statement
I have been dancing since I was six years old. Dance, for me, has always been a means of expression and dialogue, a way to get in touch with the deepest layers of the self and the other.
Since 1989, I have developed a multidisciplinary path in the areas of creation, education and research, in the transits between different body languages (contemporary, classical, African and Afro-Brazilian dances), and among diverse contexts of doing-thinking dance (artistic, activist and academic). I have worked with several choreographers and participated in collaborative contemporary dance projects in Portugal and various other countries. Along with that, I dedicated myself to the field of somatic practices and body awareness techniques. Driven by the passion for the different and the desire to expand my artistic practice, I lived for eight years in Brazil learning and collaborating with several choreographers, dancers and masters of popular culture, studying dances in their cultural, contemporary, and performative context. In Brazil, I had the chance to develop a PhD in Performing Arts (2012-2016), Masters in Dance (2009-2011), Post-Graduation in Contemporary Dance Studies (2008), degrees awarded by the Federal University of Bahia with grants from Brazilian government.
As a coreographer, I highlight “UNA” (2021), “Uma Outra de Si” (2018), “Guelra” (2016), and “transAtlântica” (2015). I have worked as choreographic assistant, and movement support for several performances, as well as a guest contemporary dance teacher in different Portuguese schools, and in the graduate programme in Performing Arts in ESTAL (Lisbon). I am an associate researcher at the Center for Communication and Society Studies (Universidade do Minho), within the Cultural Studies research group. I am also the co-founder of “Corpo de Encontro”, creative process jams that work in partnership with different spaces/ artists in Porto since 2018.
In 2019, I received a grant to do the Life/Art Process certification at the Tamalpa Institute in California (USA). In 2020, I won the EYE Program of the European Union, developing a project that bridges the areas of art, education and health in Spain. In 2013, I took part in the artistic residency “TRACES” in Benin (Award of Artistic and Cultural Mobility/Brazil), and in 2003 I participated in an artistic residency in Cape Vert, with the renowned afro-contemporary company “Raiz di Polon”. I have received several grants and have worked/ lived/ taught in Portugal, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Colombia, Benin, Cape Vert, and USA.
My work as an expressive arts facilitator is rooted on the Life/Art Process, a healing modality that uses somatic practices and artistic languages (movement, voice, drawing, writing) as a means of understanding and expressing life narratives. Expressive arts and the somatic practices address the body in its total dimension (physical, cognitive and emotional), facilitating the connection with pre-verbal and symbolic aspects of the self.
Currently, in my research as a dancer, facilitator and choreographer, I use this broad experience in the arts, the body and with transits, as paths of personal & collective development. I am interested in looking at dance not only from a ‘physical’/ choreographic point of view but in its metaphorical dimension. I believe our bodies are vehicles of consciousness, and that there is an interconnectivity between our lives, our bodies in motion, and our creative expression. Focused on the metaphorical relationship between movement and the way we interact with the world, I defend an intertwining between creative/ intercultural/ interpersonal processes. I understand dance as a cognitive action that conveys certain patterns of movement-thought, as a text of culture, a way of perceiving and interacting with society, based on the body. For me, dance is a laboratory for life, and I am particularly interested in the field of education through the art and through the body (“embodied education”). I am curious to explore how the creative process in dance can be a way to stimulate crucial interpersonal skills in today’s world, skills such as dialogue, interdependence, adaptability, empathy, care, resilience.
My approach is “process-oriented” and has been unfolding around three different axes:
– dance with somatic/ therapeutical emphasis;
– dance with technical emphasis;
– dance with community emphasis.
My main principles and research interests are: embodiment, personal expression, kinesthetic empathy, intercultural & decolonial issues, displacements and their in-between places.
The path taken over the last decade, related to the creation of dance in different cultures, settings, and target audiences, lead me to defend dance as a practice of social transformation, in its potential to bring people and communities together.