Highlights

Choreographic Laboratory

With Maria Ramos

Wednesday | 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

We work on the relationship between body and space.

We watch our favorite choreographers and read our authors of choice to think about movement, composition, their landscapes, and geographies.

We draw maps, follow trails, and discover ‘events’. Sometimes we map dance, other times dance goes off the map.

We compose dances in which we are all, simultaneously, authors, performers, and observers.

Regular movement research and improvisation-composition classes in Dance, organized in three work cycles, with moments of encounter and sharing throughout the school year.

Starting from different practices and methodologies of improvisation-composition, we will begin by forming a body (individual and collective), researching different possibilities and qualities of movement and presence. Throughout the journey, we will work on the relationships between body, space, sound, objects, texts, and narratives, progressively tuning our attention and expanding this field of work to the public space – landscape, geography, horizon, relief.

Practical note

Each session begins with a physical warm-up that mobilizes breath, body, and movement, preparing the practice and introducing the work proposals that will guide the session. This initial moment creates an individual and collective starting point, essential for the development of the work throughout the class. So that we can start the class together, we ask participants to arrive a few minutes before the session starts, to have that personal moment to stretch and settle into the space.

How the Laboratory is organised

The sessions are guided by me, and throughout the year, I like to invite artists – dancers, choreographers, and musicians – to share practices and perspectives that dialogue with the work we are developing. These sessions are integrated into the Laboratory’s journey and contribute to deepening the practices of improvisation, composition, and collective play!

Quarterly plan

The sessions are guided by me, and throughout the year, I like to invite artists — dancers, choreographers, and musicians — to share practices and perspectives that dialogue with the work we are developing. These sessions are integrated into the Laboratory’s journey, deepening the practices of improvisation and composition and enriching collective play.

Autumn (September – December)

Tuning and exploration of the technical and compositional principles that will support the work throughout the year. Movement practices and improvisation in dance. JAM at the end of the term.

Winter (January – March)

Development of improvisation-composition practices, fine-tuning attention, presence, and play. Encounter and JAM at the end of the term.

Spring (April – June)

Expansion of the work developed throughout the year. Exploration of different creative contexts, including outdoor sessions and partner studios, culminating in moments of sharing and encounter.

*Active participation, commitment, and personal dedication are essential for the continuity of individual and collective work.
*The sharing moments and their respective format will be defined throughout the school year, according to the development of the work and the group.

Audience

Professionals, non-professionals, students of dance, theater, and other performing and artistic areas, as well as people from different backgrounds and interests who wish to deepen their contemporary dance practice through improvisation, composition, and movement research.Those who are just starting out in dance will benefit from beginning their journey at the start of the school year, keeping pace with the group’s evolution since the first work cycle.

Clothing / Material
Comfortable clothing that also protects the body when working on the floor is recommended (pants and long-sleeved t-shirt). Bring a water bottle, notebook, and pen. Some proposals may take place outside the studio – in that case, it is recommended to bring a layer of warm clothing and comfortable footwear.

Guest artists from previous years
Joana Pupo (actress/creator), Jaime Mears (actress/creator, AU-PT), Ana Mira (dancer/teacher), Sara Anjo (dancer/creator), Teresa Silva (dancer/creator), Angus Balbernie (choreographer/director, UK), Christy Funsch (dancer/creator, USA), Inês Zinho Pinheiro (dancer/creator), moss kissing (musician), Miguel Sobral Curado (musician), Noeli Kikuchi (dancer/creator).

Territories of research

Keywords

· Space · Body
· Relationship · Attention
· Landscape · Crossing
· Choreography as landscape-in-action*
· Practice as research

*Choreography as landscape-in-action – title of the dance research that I develop within the scope of my choreographic and pedagogical practice.

Bio

Maria Ramos
Between 1996 and 2009, she lived in the Netherlands, where she studied and developed her professional career as a dancer, working with various independent choreographers in the Netherlands, Germany, England and the USA. Highlights include her work with choreographer/director Angus Balbernie (UK), choreographers Olga Pona (UK), Katja F. M. Wolf (DE) and Janis Claxton (UK-AU). She trained in Dance at the Hogeschool voor de kunsten/ArtEZ (1996-2000) and obtained a Master’s degree in Choreography, ArtEZ Master of Choreography (Moc, 2006-2008), at the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in Arnhem.

On her return to Portugal, she completed the Research and Creation course at Forum Dança, in Lisbon, in the context of which she began to create her first solo work, 7pm/Rumour, a piece that begins the cycle of works entitled Um Certo Grau de Imobilidade (A Certain Degree of Immobility), supported by DGArtes and the Gulbenkian Foundation. This cycle also includes the pieces Nerves and Something Still Uncaptured, presented in the Netherlands, Portugal and Argentina. He later choreographed the piece Árida, a project supported by DGArtes.

She currently collaborates with actress and creator Joana Pupo (in the project O Corpo Inominável) and with choreographer Madalena Victorino (in various choreographic projects), as a dancer/creator or as a creative assistant. At the same time, she has been teaching at the Escola Superior de Dança (since 2017), at the Escola Superior de Artes e Design das Caldas da Rainha (since 2016) and at Forum Dança (since 2012).

“When people ask me what dance technique I teach and who I studied improvisation, composition and choreography with, I always end up having to talk about my dance background and practices. In my classes, I take my own approach which includes contemporary dance techniques based on the Release technique (learned from Amélia Bentes and Sofia Neuparth and, later, during the course at EDDC/ArtEZ with teachers Eva Karczag, Mary O’Donnell Fulkerson, Gill Clarke and João da Silva); contact-improvisation (Karen Nelson, Steve Paxton); floor work; partner work (David Zambrano, Iñaki Azpillaga/Ultima Vez); fall and recovery; vertical movement and movement through space; improvisation and composition. Developed throughout my dance career with teachers and choreographers from the so-called New Portuguese Dance, such as Sofia Neuparth, Amélia Bentes, Peter Michael Dietz, Clara Andermatt and Francisco Camacho, especially in the context of the five-month Research and Choreographic Creation Course at Forum Dança, as well as in the Netherlands and England, with creators and teachers such as Steve Paxton, Deborah Hay, Yvonne Rainer (from whom I learned the iconic solo “Trio A”) and Karen Nelson/Lisa Nelson, and with dancers and teachers from the companies Trisha Brown and Siobhan Davies, Eva Karczag (who passed on to me notions of ‘full-body movement and the practice of being in the moment’ and with whom I also practiced the martial art T’ai Chi Ch’uan, which Karczag in turn learned from the teacher Gerda Geddes), Lisa Kraus and Gill Clarke.

Also important for me in terms of the performer’s work, composition and improvisation was the work I did as a dancer with choreographer/director Angus Balbernie between 2000-2009, and the workshops with the Goat Island Performance Group, Matthew Goulish and Lin Hixson, Deborah Hay, Peter Pleyer and Jonathan Burrows.”

More info: Choreographic work | Laboratory Notebook | Aulas e Práticas de Dança, Hoje

Pre-registration process

1. Pre-register online using the form provided;
2. Wait for our email with payment instructions;
3. Pay for your registration as indicated in the email sent to you;
4. Send us proof of payment to our email address;
5. Your registration will only be validated once we have received your receipt.

Contemporary Dance classes for adults

With Josefa Pereira & Bárbara Faustino

Tuesday & Wednesday | 7:30 pm – 9:30

“The Contemporary Dance classes at Forum Dança will be conducted in the 2025/26 academic year through a multifaceted experience proposed by Josefa Pereira, Bárbara Faustino, and guests. The aim of our classes is to create a space for encounter and collectivity, where the alternation between artists encourages the sharing and crossing of different bodily practices, exploring both what they have in common and the particularities that each work proposal will allow them to experience.

Based on this exchange between teachers/artists and students/artists, the aim is to provide a context for experimentation that activates in each participant the availability and readiness necessary for a journey through practices that seek to provide the experience of creative tools through dance and the body in movement.

In our classes, different techniques and training methods are used to achieve a more powerful and self-aware body. Little by little, we cultivate a sensitive, more accessible, and porous body, with better vitality and energy circulation, more resilient and malleable with itself and in relation to its surroundings. Finally, we seek to mobilize a more inventive body that is constantly updating its ways of being and existing.

The classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays are open to anyone interested in dance and movement practices. Therefore, not only dance artists and beginners are welcome, but also people who have no previous experience in physical practices. Curiosity and availability are the only requirements to join us.”

[Josefa Pereira and Bárbara Faustino]

As part of the annual scholarships offered by Forum Dança, we would like to extend an invitation to black, trans, non-binary, and/or immigrant individuals who are unable to afford the classes. If you fall into any of these categories and are interested in joining us, please contact us by email at: forumdança@forumdanca.pt

(the two scholarships available will be awarded in order of application)

Biographies

Josefa Pereira (BR/PT) is a choreographer and performer. She lives in Portugal and collaborates in São Paulo, the city where she grew up and trained artistically. She completed her master’s degree at DAS Choreography – AHK (NL) with a scholarship from the Gulbenkian Foundation. She participated in PACAP and graduated in Dance and Performance at PUC-SP (BR) as a PROUNI program scholarship recipient.

With a strong focus on practice and research, her artistic approach involves engaging with available and readily accessible materials that can emerge as fabulous, enchanted, or monstrous. Her attention focuses on a field of listening and sensitivity in which doing through different frictions becomes capable of enabling other potentials of poetic and aesthetic agency, generating transformations and mutations of forms, states, and perceptions. In this dynamic relationship between materials/collaborators or between human and more-than-human entities, collaborative thinking, cooperative agency, and coexistence implied in each choreographic gesture are prioritized.

In addition to her authorial work and collaborations as a performer and in the field of dramaturgy, she is dedicated to teaching activities, which include classes and workshops.

More about Josefa Pereira here.

Bárbara Faustino (BR/PT) dedicates herself to creation and teaching in the fields of contemporary dance and performance. She researches the body as a territory of study where expressive possibilities are infinite and investigates the fertile dialogue between teaching and creation. She graduated from the Escola Municipal de Bailado do Teatro Municipal de São Paulo and also holds a Degree in Dance and Movement from the Universidade Anhembi Morumbi. She completed the course for Pre-Primary and Primary teachers at the Royal Academy of Dance of London. Based in Portugal since 2014, she worked as a dancer, teacher, and cultural manager at Musibéria – International Center for Music and Dance of the Iberian World, in Serpa (Alentejo), where she deepened her autographic research in the fields of dance creation and teaching. She currently resides in Lisbon, where she develops work as a dance teacher in different educational, artistic, and intergenerational contexts, balancing pedagogical practice with her artistic research. Her work lies at the intersection of teaching, creation, and community practices. She worked with Jérôme Bel in THE SHOW MUST GO ON, founded HIDRA Cia. de dança in partnership with dancer Janice Iandritsky, and is also part of Mosaicollective. She recently received the New Creations Grant from Pédexumbo with the project ‘ATRAVESSAR – a invenção de um percurso dançado pelo Bairro Celeiros’.

More about Bárbara Faustino here.

Note: the first four classes of the year will be taught by Catarina Vieira.

Catarina Vieira, 1983, Aveiro, Portugal. Multidisciplinary artist and performer. Holds a degree in Actor and Director Training from ESTC (Lisbon, 2007). Master’s degree from DAS Theatre (Amsterdam, 2018), with a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

Created and directed: Chego sempre atrasada aos funerais importantes (Teatro Maria Matos, 2018); Matéria, an open studio for sharing performing practices; As canções que cantamos contra os muros que limpamos (2022), a participatory project in collaboration with Aixa Figini and Josefa Pereira; Lugar X (2023-2024), an artistic research project on ecological regeneration in context, which resulted in a performance and an audiobook.

Interested in creating encounters as hybrid performing situations that question and expand the modalities of being together. This practice often invites participation in order to generate reflection on collective gestures, agency, autonomy, shared responsibility, conflict, and dissent.
She has been part of the Cooperativa Dramatúrgica since 2023.
Together with Raquel André and Sara de Castro, she founded the MUDA project – Harassment in the Arts in Portugal.

More about Catarina Vieira here.

Pre-registration process

From Body to Body – Interdisciplinary movement practices

With Gisela Dória

Monday | 7:30 pm – 9 pm

These classes are for anyone who wants to explore the body in action and discover the pleasure of moving — with or without dance experience.

Inspired by techniques such as contemporary dance, Pilates, Gyrokinesis®, and other somatic practices, Gisela Dória leads a process-oriented work that values the uniqueness of each body, developing physical awareness and sensory perception.

More than simply combining methods, the classes integrate different approaches to expand the pleasure of movement, physical functionality, and vitality. They also create space for continuous self-observation and reflection about our bodies.
These sessions are designed for those who, instead of a traditional gym setting, prefer a creative and welcoming environment.

[Gisela Dória]

Duration: 1h20
For: adults of all ages, no technical prerequisites

Biografia

Gisela Dória is a choreographer, researcher, teacher and dancer who graduated from the College of the Royal Academy of Dance in London. She is a collaborator with the Centre for Theatre Studies at the University of Lisbon. She has a post-doctorate from USP’s School of Communications and Arts, a doctorate in Performing Arts from Unicamp’s Institute of Arts and a master’s degree in Performing Arts from USP. She published the book ‘A Poética de Sem Lugar: Por uma Teatralidade na Dança’ in 2013. She founded and directed Duo Escola de Dança in Campo Grande, MS, Brazil for over 24 years. She specialises in Pilates, GYROKINESIS® and Klein Technique® certification.
As a choreographer and performer, she has collaborated with Ginga Cia de Dança, Dançurbana and Coletivo Performa Teatro.

Personal website at www.giseladoria.com

1. Pre-register online using the form provided;
2. Wait for our email with payment instructions;
3. Pay for your registration as indicated in the email sent to you;
4. Send us proof of payment to our email address;
5. Your registration will only be validated once we have received your receipt.