Highlights

With Josefa Pereira & Bárbara Faustino

Tuesday & Wednesday | 19h30-21h30

“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.

https://cargocollective.com/josefapereira

Bárbara Faustino (BR/PT) is dedicated to creation and teaching in the areas 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 Municipal Ballet School of the Municipal Theater of São Paulo and also holds a degree in Dance and Movement from Anhembi Morumbi University. She completed the Pre-Primary and Primary Teachers’ Course at the Royal Academy of Dance of London.
Based in Portugal since 2014, she has worked as a dancer, manager, and dance teacher at Musibéria – International Center for Music and Dance of the Iberian World – in Serpa, Alentejo, where she developed her own research in the areas of dance teaching and creation. She currently resides in Lisbon, working as a dance teacher at venues such as Academia Inatel and Fórum Dança, in addition to continuing her artistic research at the intersection of teaching, performance, and creation. She worked with Jérôme Bel on THE SHOW MUST GO ON, founded the HIDRA dance company in partnership with dancer Janice Iandritsky, and is also part of Mosaicollective. She recently received the Pédexumbo New Creations Grant for the project “ATRAVESSAR – the invention of a dance route through the Celeiros neighborhood.”

Pre-registration process

With Gisela Dória

Interdisciplinary movement practices

School year 2025/26

Monday | 19h30-21h00

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

Note: classes begin in October

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.