Title Image

History

Keith Hennessy

4 june 2025, 18h00 to 20h00

Dancing as Political Healing

Hennessy will share ideas and stories that circle around the potential for experimental dance and improvisation practices to contribute to political healing.  If the harm or trauma is political (structural, legal, normative), should the healing be entirely personal? Jewish anarchist Gustav Landauer (1870-1919) meets Black lesbian feminist Audre Lorde (1934-1992) in a Fake Healing clinic at Forum Dança in 2025. What is happening? What is possible?

 

Organização: Forum Dança e Associação Parasita

 

The lecture will be conducted in English.

Keith Hennessy

Biopic-KeithHennessy

Keith Hennessy, is a frolicker, imperfectionist, and witch working in the fields of dance, performance, activism, affordable housing, and queer sexuality. Always learning through improvisation and collaboration, Hennessy’s work is interdisciplinary and experimental. Born in Canada, based in San Francisco (Yelamu) for over 40 years, Hennessy tours internationally. Collaborations include Ishmael Houston-Jones, Sarah Crowell, Snowflake Towers, Jassem Hindi, Meg Stuart, And Peaches. www.circozero.org

 

www.circozero.org

Informação geral

Data

25 de junho de 2025, das 18h00 às 20h00

 

Local
Forum Dança – Espaço da Penha
Travessa do Calado, 26B, 1170-070 Lisboa

 

Entrada livre, sujeita à lotação do espaço.

Top picture © Pat Mic

PACAP 8 / Mystery School lectures

Support and Partnerships

Co-Production PACAP 8: Culturgest | Teatro do Bairro Alto | Anda & Fala | Walk e Talk | Goethe-Institut Portugal, in the scope of Kulturfest festival.

Co-producer in Residency PACAP 8: O Espaço do Tempo

Support PACAP 8: Alkantara | Casa da Dança – Almada | Fundação GDA | Kees Eijrond Foundation | OPART, E.P.E/Estúdios Victor Córdon | O Rumo do Fumo | Piscina

Forum Dança | Parcerias e Apoios PACAP 8

Participants PACAP 8

Biographies

Select each of the sections below to meet the people taking part in PACAP 8.

Ana Szopa (PL)

Ana Szopa
Ana Szopa

Ana (An): they/them/she/her – Born in 2000 in Silesia. Dance hostess, performer, choreographer, Reiki II healer, fuck the system sorcerer. Explores the possibilities of learning for oneself and others through dance and seeks methods of anonymization. Anonymous, meaning collective, rejects authorship and ownership of spoken and embodied content. By constructing queer personas in performance, engages in dialogue with them and learns from them, often allowing artistic practices to drift into entropy and explore the limits of control (raising questions about safety and consent).

António Bollaño (PT)

ANTONIO - Cópia

António Bollaño was born in 1998. He studied in the theatre school Escola Profissional de Teatro de Cascais and the dance and theatre school FOR Dance Theatre. He finished his degree in Acting in Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema. As an actor and dancer worked with Bestiário, Olga Roriz, Nuno Carinhas, Pedro Ramos, Sara Carinhas, Carlos Avilez among others.

Arash Khakpour (IR)

ARASH

Arash Khakpour (آرش خاکپور) is a dancer and choreographer from Tehran and is privileged to be a dance artist based in the Coast Salish Territory (Vancouver, Canada). Arash has been practicing dance and performance for the past 15 years and has been a company member of the EDAM Contact Improvisation ensemble since 2017. He tends to invest in the nuances of prejudices in the body as a way of inviting the unconscious to the conscious, and as a doorway to confront unknown emotions. He sees dance as a process of physical, emotional and spiritual discovery and a mode of transformation.

Emily da Silva (BR)

EMILY

Emily da Silva is a Brazilian dancer and performer living in Lisbon. As a freelance artist, she collaborates with different artists and projects. She is interested in the idea of circularity – between tornadoes, whirlpools, black holes, somersaults and gyrations – exploring movements that destabilize, turn, reinvent the body and transfrom space.

Guillermo Tarasewicz (UY)

GUILLERMO

Guillermo Tarasewicz: Hartist, scenic/live. He is interested in the themes of popular culture and mass culture. His works are woven between dance, contemporary theater, and performance studies. He studied dance, social anthropology, and physical education. Based on this knowledge, he has created more than 15 pieces and developed some practices such as: ‘Danza tropical uruguaya’ and ‘Corporalidad Expandida’.

Isabela Rossi (BR/IT)

ISABELA

Isabela Rossi (BR) moves between dance, performance and creation. Trained in contemporary dance at RCPD Mariemma (Madrid, 2016), she has worked as a performer with various choreographers in Spain. In 2020, she received the AISGE Award for Outstanding Dancer for the piece LINGUA, by Natalia Fernandes. As a creator, she investigates the relationship between the wandering body, space and temporality. Since 2021, she has collaborated with Miguel Glez. on works such as Proceso de acomodación, awarded at the 34th CCM 

iSaAc iSaBeL Espinoza Hidrobo (EC)

ISSIE

iSaAc iSaBeL Espinoza Hidrobo is an Ecuadorian choreographer, trans artist-activist and violinist based in Europe. Their Works engages with trans-feminist anti-colonialism and ritualism, exploring transdisciplinary constellations of participatory composition. As a mestizo of Spanish/Kichwa/Cañari ancestry, iSSiE currently fosters “SHELTER” a transatlantic social-artistic research project in collaboration with Kichwa indigenous communities of the Andes, cultivating movement for socio-ecological justice. They is the artistic director and founder of maiskind, a queer artistic community in Cologne and member of the Yachay Wasi – Quito, INTERFEMME* and SOFRA Queer Migrants communities.

Julia Kosałka (PL)

JULIA

Julia Kosałka is a dance artist born in Kraków, Poland. She studied contemporary dance in Austria and Belgium, graduating from Conservatoire of Antwerp. She has worked in Germany with Iván Pérez at Dance Theatre Heidelberg and Alina Belyagina. She also collaborated with choreographers such as Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe, Claire Croizé, Inãki Azpillaga, Renan Martins, Ben Fury, and Agostina D’Alessandro.

Her practices are rooted in improvisation and real-time composition.

Kaya Freeman (PT)

KAYA

Kaya: I was born in Brussels to a portuguese mother and united-staten father 25 years ago. My parents are performing artsts and have been transmitng their interest and passion for art in many of its forms to me ever since I was born. I started to play classical piano around 6 and then discovered Fado and clarinet which deconstructed my very formal view of music. My practice then became more experimental as I played with different bands revolving around contemporary and ambient electronic music as well as an interest for jazz. During these researches I also studied at La Cambre in Brussels, contemporary bookbinding, and have been experimenting with ceramics, textles crafs, baking and fashion as some of my main passions.

María Ibarretxe (ES)

MARIA

María Ibarretxe del Val. Visual and performing artist. The body, voice and participation are central in her work. She is part of the collective Sra. Polaroiska with Alaitz Arenzana. Collaboration drives her practice, often working with other artists and in diverse socio-cultural contexts such as Japan, South Korea, Mexico, or Kurdistan, where she nourishes, learns, and constantly questions herself.

Martha Kotsia (GR)

MARTHA

Martha Kotsia (1996) is a multidisciplinary artist and activist based in Athens, Greece, born as a migrant in Malmö, Sweden. Reflecting on a “post”-colonial society and her childhood traumas her art varies between choreography, performance art, video, light design and poetry. After moving to Brussels to practice contemporary dance in her early adult years, she returned to Athens for architecture studies (National Technical University of Athens) as well as to later on attend the Academy of Choreography U(r)topias (Elefsina, Greece). While trying to contribute to re-wildness she’s publishing a research on Savage, Landscape and Walking.

Michiru Shin (JP)

SOMI

Michiru Shin (she/they) is a dance artist from Tokyo. Holds a BA in Visual Communication from Brighton University, UK. As a performer, she has collaborated with Bosmat Nossan, Lilach Pnina Livne, and Yasmeen Godder, among others. Her personal project, “Abstracted Bodies” incorporates dance movement, hand-poked tattoos of her abstract drawings, and Ilan Lev method treatment involving voice and touch. The project offers tools for deconstructing our images, gender, and social and political roles, suggesting the way to become abstract-shaped entities.

Natacha Campos (PT)

NATACHA

Natacha Campos, the daughter of Angolan parents born in the late 1990s, has worked in the languages of dance, theater and performance. Her research focuses on the confrontation between the visible and the invisible, the intimate and the public, in an attempt to find the common denominators in the apparently antagonistic.

Raul Aranha (IN)

RAUL

Raul Aranha: I was born and raised in India, and moved to Europe in 2018. I like a lot of things from dancing to cooking to sciences and philosophy.

Salomé Pham-Van-Hué (FR)

SALOME

Salomé Pham-Van-Hué. It is about living in this world, in the most living way possible. Through experimentation, I’m finding a path. Dance field represents for me a dreamed space of exploration ; and it should remain that way. I encountered it only a few years ago, after meandering in different fields. Since then, I had the chance to learn and transform near great people, as a student, as an interpreter in various projects but also with friends inventing ways of living and moving in daily life. For the next few years, I would like to pursue this research. It is about playing with, redefining, blurring edges to open interstices of freedom, expression and struggle.

Sepideh Khodarahmi (SE/IR)

SEPIDEH

Sepideh Khodarahmi is an artist working in dance and theatre whose work explores the tensions between pleasure and disgust, construction and destruction. Combining rhythm-based movement, club dance, and hyper-gendered drag, Sepideh Khodarahmi creates visceral and boundary-pushing performances that explore self-objectification, power dynamics, and absurdity.

They hold a BA in Acting from University of Gothenburg aswell as studied at the Department of Mathematics at Stockholm University, Broadway Dance Center, and Mime at Amsterdam Academy of Theatre and Dance.

Śomi Śniegocka (PL)

somiiiiii

Śomi is an artist, sound poet and witch. Inspired by the surrealists and fascinated by psychogeography, she translates dreams into wa(l)king language. She connects with spirits and non-human creatures  through visions and various embodiment practices.

Her research manifests itself in the murmuring sounds of the subconscious and expanding auditory perception by means of  Deep Listening practices, Logomotion and Dreamwork.
She studied Performance Studies at the Jagiellonian University and Intermedia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, preparing her diploma in the Audiosphere studio. She has shown her performance Roe Deer Woman  among others at Movement Research in New York City and in numerous underground places in Mexico, where she lived for a while. She currently teaches at the Institute of Art and Design UKEN in Krakow.
Devoted admirer of planets, cats and synchronicities.

Therese Bendjus (DE)

Therese

Therese Bendjus is a performance maker and dancer originally from Dresden, Germany. After having traded her medical studies for an education in dance, she graduated from the BA Dance, Context, Choreography at HZT Berlin and was a fellow of Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. In her works she challenges the measurable/diagnosable in order to access spaces of uncertainty and vagueness – building multi-sensorial spaces, that encourage people to be vulnerable, intimate and brave with one another and themselves.

As performer she worked a.o. with choreographers and theatre directors such as Kirill Savchenkov, Magdalena Weniger, Asya Ashman, Constanza Macras and Rolando Villazón.

Tiago Vieira (PT)

TIAGO - Cópia

Tiago Vieira: A graduate of the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema, he completed his training in various theater, dance and performance workshops, including Teatro Praga, Olga Mesa, Vera Mantero, Susana Vidal, Miguel Moreira, Meg Stuart, Marlene Freitas, Joana Craveiro, Amália Bentes, Vitor Roriz and Sofia Dias, Francisco Camacho. He has worked with Mónica Calle, Miguel Moreira, Vera Mantero, Carlota Lagido, Ana Borralho and João Galante, Ana Ribeiro, Rui Catalão, Miguel Bonneville, Ricci/forte, BLITZ THEATREGROUP (Greece), Vânia Rovisco, Mónica Garnel, Catarina Vieira, Teatro Praga.

PACAP 8 Activities

PACAP 8 / Mystery School lectures

Support and Partnerships

Co-Production PACAP 8: Culturgest | Teatro do Bairro Alto | Anda & Fala / Walk & Talk | Goethe-Institut Portugal, in the scope of Kulturfest festival.

Co-producer in Residency PACAP 8: O Espaço do Tempo

Support PACAP 8: Alkantara | Casa da Dança – Almada | Fundação GDA | Kees Eijrond Foundation | OPART, E.P.E/Estúdios Victor Córdon | O Rumo do Fumo | Piscina

Forum Dança | Parcerias e Apoios PACAP 8
Forum Dança - Meg Stuart | PACAP 8/MyS no TBA

Astral on the Dancefloor

Pacap 8 / Mystery School of Choreography

Teatro do Bairro Alto

24 and 25 May, 2025 | Sat and Sun

MYS
Mystery School of Choreography
Escola mistério de coreografia
L’école chorégraphique du mystère
Escola Misteriosa de Coreografia
Tajymnŏ szkōła choreografije
Schule der Mysterien in der Choreografie
Μυστηριώδες σχολείο χορογραφίας
Tajemnicza Szkoła Choreografii
Escuela Mística de Coreografía
مدرسه رمز و راز طراحی رقص
Mysterium Skola för Koreografi
Escuela Coreográfica del Misterio
コレオグラフィーのミステリースクール

How do we passionately integrate ancient knowledge in uncomfortable times?

At Teatro do Bairro Alto, a community of artists & dreamers will bring a multidimensional experience of their journey in a crystalline evening of MYS and guests.

The performance unfolds and shape-shifts through ceremonies of desire, and invitations of reconnection. Magical child meets queen of cups, interspecies songs are channelled for other possible worlds while the full moon howls through ruins of yesterday and tomorrow.

As above so below, through material and quantum activations, we set intention for a space where bodies meet imagination and reality.

Love is a mystery, and every practice is a ritual.

“Astral on the Dancefloor”, an encounter of fine lines between quantum feelings and quantum spaces.

Artistic direction & MYS concept Meg Stuart
Artistic colaboration Ana Rocha
Participants Ana Szopa, António Bollaño, Arash Khakpour, Emily da Silva, Guillermo Tarasewicz, Isabela Rossi, iSaAc iSaBeL Espinoza Hidrobo, Julia Kosałka, Kaya Freeman, María Ibarretxe, Martha Kotsia, Michiru Shin, Natacha Campos, Raul Aranha, Salomé Pham-Van-Hué, Sepideh Khodarahmi, Śomi Śniegocka, Therese Bendjus, Tiago Vieira
Live Sound Pedro Melo Alves & Jari
Lights & Technical Direction Santiago Rodríguez Tricot
Production Forum Dança
Coproduction Teatro do Bairro Alto, Goethe-Institut Portugal, as part of the KULTURfest

Venue

TBA – Teatro do Bairro Alto
Rua Tenente Raul Cascais 1A | 1250-268 Lisboa

 

More info here

TBA online tickets online here

PACAP 8 Activities

PACAP 8 / Mystery School lectures

Support and Partnerships

Co-Production PACAP 8: Culturgest | Teatro do Bairro Alto | Anda & Fala | Walk e Talk | Goethe-Institut Portugal, in the scope of Kulturfest festival.

Co-producer in Residency PACAP 8: O Espaço do Tempo

Support PACAP 8: Alkantara | Casa da Dança – Almada | Fundação GDA | Kees Eijrond Foundation | OPART, E.P.E/Estúdios Victor Córdon | O Rumo do Fumo | Piscina

Forum Dança | Parcerias e Apoios PACAP 8

Top image credits © Aline Belfort

Forum Dança - Marcelo Evelin | PACAP 9

Forum Dança | PACAP 9 - Marcelo Evelin

Forum Dança | PACAP 9 - Bruno Moreno

PACAP 9
2026

Performing Arts Advanced Programme

Curatorship by Marcelo Evelin

From 2nd February to 30th July 2026

Applications closed.

Presentation

PACAP 9 / One swallow doesn’t make a summer

Curatorship Marcelo Evelin
Artistic Collaboration Bruno Moreno

‘An undisciplined experimentation and training programme, focused on instances of group creation and conditions of collaborative performativity.

 

We will invest in collective processes to the detriment of individual projects, believing that it is possible to bring the singularities of the artists and their personal artistic interests into group experimentation. We are interested in negotiating with the other as a conceptual and procedural procedure, betting on shared autonomy as an exercise in alterity, in order to think of gathering and sharing as a performative act and device.

 

From February to July 2026, we are proposing a series of interventions in the form of creative residencies, with artists involved in collective practices that exercise a thought of the common as a choreographic situation: the game, the rite, the circle, the party. These practices will be reworked together, renegotiated as a group and eventually performed at different times during the programme.

 

The programme addresses three axes of experimentation with no distinction between theory and practice: body, dramaturgy, and choreography. We think of the body as a tactile and media spectacle, an artefact of an incorporated and changing time-space. We imagine dramaturgy as the activation of living matter and normative disobedience, as the apprehension and unfolding of empirical knowledge, and as an ethical and aesthetic positioning in the face of the life of forms. We invent choreography as unstable and flexible structures of grouping, repercussion, and dissolution, and as a vibration that precedes the constitution of movement as a scope for an event.

 

We want to approach the multiple and the rhizomatic, the diverse and the unfolded, the drift and the reconstitution, the bifurcated and the complementary. From a decolonial and non-hegemonic understanding of the world, we want to reaffirm the existence of the sensible and the utopian in the social and political spheres, in a horizon that expands and recognizes other paradigms for thinking about life and living.’

 

Marcelo Evelin

Information

Guest Artists

Ana Rita Teodoro, André Lepecki, Christine Greiner, Coletivo Piscina (Andrei Bessa, Bibi Dória, Bruno Brandolino, Josefa Pereira, Julián Pacomio, Márcia Lança, Natália Mendonça and Romain Beltrão Teule), Eleonora Fabião, Jocelyn Cottencin, Marine Sigaut, Miguel Pereira, Piny, Tieta Macau, Venuri Perera, Flavia Pinheiro.

Target audience

Artists with experience in the performing arts fields, who are interested in collective creation processes. The programme values collaborative practices, the ability to listen and negotiate in groups, and openness to joint experimentation. It is not aimed at those who want to develop individual authorial projects, but rather at those who want to integrate and contribute to a context of shared creation.

Language

English will be the official language of the programme.

 

Warning!
Applications can be sent in Portuguese and English.

Dates

    • Closing date for applications 30.11.2025
    • Results december 2025

Timetable

Monday to Friday from 10h00 to 17h00. This timetable is indicative only and may be subject to change.

An outline of the work schedule will be sent to the group of people selected before the programme begins.

Applications

Elements to send:

    • A brief CV, a photo of yourself and a portfolio.
    • A brief motivation letter

! IMPORTANT NOTE !

 

The links sent must provide direct access to online viewing of the files (Youtube, Vimeo, etc.).

Selection process

1. Application stage

    • Fill in the application form on the Forum Dança website

 

2. Auditions stage

    • Auditions can be held in person at Espaço da Penha or, if you are outside Europe, online via the Zoom app

Tuition fees

    • Registration: 200€;
    • Payment in full: 2000€; (€1,000 for scholarship recipients with a 50% discount)
    • Payment in two instalments: 1100€ x 2.

Scholarships

Scholarships assigned:

 

  • 2 scholarships offering a 50% reduction of the tuition fees.
  • 1 scholarship offering 100% reduction of the tuition fees, aimed at artists from Portuguese Speaking African Countries or Black artists living in Portugal.
  • Artists residing in Portugal are eligible for up to 50% reduction of the tuition fees through scholarships given out by the GDA Foundation (In cases where the applicant is a member of the GDA this increases up to 75%).

Application form

Important!
Applications and all documentation can be sent in Portuguese and English.

All fields are mandatory.

Bios

Marcelo Evelin

Forum Dança | PACAP 9 - Marcelo Evelin
Marcelo Evelin

Marcelo Evelin is a dancer, choreographer and researcher. He lives between Teresina and Amsterdam and works in Brazil, Japan and several European countries as an independent artist at the head of the Demolition Incorporada Platform, based at CAMPO, a space for Residence and Resistance in the Performing Arts in Teresina, Piaui. His shows ‘De Repente Fica Tudo Preto de Gente’, ‘Batucada’ and ‘A Invenção da Maldade’ are currently touring theatres and festivals around the world. He has been teaching at the Amsterdam School of Arts since 1999 and creates projects at universities and masterclasses, including ISAC (Brussels), Reina Sofia Museum (Madrid), EXERCE (Montpellier) and CND (Paris). In 2019 he was awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa by the Federal University of Piauí. In 2020 he created ‘And Yes, I sad Yes, I will Yes’ for Coroline Eckly/Compania Carte Blanche (Bergen, Norway), ‘Drama’ for La Manufacture (Lausanne, Switzerland), ‘La Nuit Tombe Quand Elle Veut’ (Rennes, France) in collaboration with Latifa Laabissi, and re-presented his solo ‘ai, ai, ai’ (1995) at the Festival d’Automne in Paris. In 2022 he recreated the performance event BARRICADA for the Transborda Festival (Almada, Portugal) and premiered UIRAPURU, the latest creation by Plataforma Demolition Incorporada.

Bruno Moreno

Forum Dança | PACAP 9 - Bruno Moreno
Bruno Moreno

Bruno Moreno was born in 1988 in São Paulo. Since 2018 he has lived between the capital of São Paulo and Teresina/PI, where he is a resident artist at CAMPO arte contemporânea. He has a degree in performing arts from the University of São Paulo and is a performer and choreographer.

Since 2014 he has collaborated with the Marcelo Evelin/Demolition Incorporada platform. He has collaborated as a performer with choreographers Alejandro Ahmed, Luis Garay, Gustavo Ciríaco and was a member of [pH2]: estado de teatro, where he created works as a performer, director and choreographic director. His creations start from choreography and oscillate between performance, installation and video.

He has taken part in the residency programme at Espaço Alkantara (Lisbon), as well as performing at Mostra VERBO (São Paulo). His video works have been shown at the Tiradentes Film Festival (Brazil), the Ann Arbor Film Festival (USA), the Short Waves Festival (Poland), Short Out (Italy), the Accesos magazine of artistic practices at the Reina Sofia Museum (Spain), and are part of the collection of works at the Paraná Museum of Contemporary Art. He was one of the resident artists on the PIVÔ Research 2024 programme.

Participants

Abdulay Bragança Dias (ST), Bruna Danesi (BR), Camila Delgado (CH), Déborah Alessandra Soares (BR), Federico Brocal (UY), Johanna Szőke (HU), Julia Domínguez (ES), Manuela Libman (BR), Maria Ramalho (BR), Maria Tamarit (ES), Mel Paiva (PT), Parvin Saljoughi (IR), Paula Otero (BR).

PACAP 9 Activities

Support & Parternships

Coproduction: Teatro do Bairro Alto

Coproduction in Residency PACAP 9: O Espaço do Tempo

Support PACAP 9: Alkantara | Casa da Dança – Almada | Fundação GDA | OPART, E.P.E/Estúdios Victor Córdon | O Rumo do Fumo | Piscina

Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Márcio K. Canabarro | Forum Dança

Márcio K. Canabarro

25th June 2025, from 18h00 to 20h00

Auto-Fiction as Awareness Practice

(Auto-Ficção como Prática de Consciência)

This “lecture”, Auto-Fiction as Awareness Practice, explores storytelling, embodiment, and perception. It studies how writing and dance serve as tools for self-translation, allowing the artist to reshape identity, memory, and reality itself. As vision fades, the body becomes a living text—one that the audience reads, interprets, and possesses.

 

The “lecture” disturbs ideas of truth, proposing fiction as a deeper form of honesty. It teases the gaze, asking: Can vision divorce point of view? What is more real—the act of creation or the circumstances of the creator?

 

Through “science”, “dance”, and radical self-narration, the speaker performs an experiment in presence and disappearance, where seeing itself is queered by its biochemical origins. This is not just a talk; it is an invitation to surrender—to fiction, to movement, to heart brakes (because they can produce so much writing).

 

And afterwards? We’ll drink. Or we’ll talk. Or both.

This lecture will be conducted in English.

Márcio K. Canabarro

Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Márcio K. Canabarro | Forum Dança
Márcio K. Canabarro © Michiel Keuper

Márcio K. Canabarro was born in 1985 in Brazil. He is a dancer and choreographer with a BA in Social Communication, a Performing Major from SEAD, and a certified Embodied Myoreflex Therapy Practitioner.

Márcio is interested in exploring the intersections of narratology, performance and mindfulness practices. His work focuses on the socio-emotional implications of cultural biases around vision in shaping the intimacy, self-esteem, and social roles of the blind, visually impaired, loosing eye-sight individuals.

He has a degenerative disease called retinitis pigmentosa, which causes progressive loss of peripheral vision and eventually blindness. Rather than treating it as an obstacle, he views it as a creative collaborator that requires adaptability, inventiveness, and connection. Reframing the experience of visual impairment not as an isolating one, but as an opportunity to mediate an alternative point of awareness.

Márcio also works as a freelance dancer for Hodworks (HU), CRANKY BODIES/ a company (DE) and Meg Stuart/ Damaged Goods (BE/DE). In the past he has collaborated with Benoit Lachambre, Sara Shelton Mann, Mark Thompkins, Keith Henessy and others.

General information

Date

25th June 2025, from 18h00 to 20h00

 

Venue
Forum Dança – Espaço da Penha
Travessa do Calado, 26B, 1170-070 Lisboa

 

Free entry, subject to capacity.

Top image © Pat Mic

PACAP 8 / Mystery School lectures

Support and Partnerships

Co-Production PACAP 8: Culturgest | Teatro do Bairro Alto | Anda & Fala | Walk e Talk | Goethe-Institut Portugal, in the scope of Kulturfest festival.

Co-producer in Residency PACAP 8: O Espaço do Tempo

Support PACAP 8: Alkantara | Casa da Dança – Almada | Fundação GDA | Kees Eijrond Foundation | OPART, E.P.E/Estúdios Victor Córdon | O Rumo do Fumo | Piscina

Forum Dança | Parcerias e Apoios PACAP 8
Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | CAConrad | Forum Dança

CAConrad

7th May 2025, from 18h00 to 20h00

First Light: Longevity of Practice with (Soma)tic Rituals

2025 is CAConrad’s 50th anniversary of writing poetry, and over the past half-century, they have known many brilliant artists who stopped doing their work for various reasons, from being overwhelmed by their new and growing families or jobs to disappointments with the reception of their art. Using (Soma)tic Rituals can keep us vibrating on the frequency of our talents no matter what challenges lie ahead.

 

We will focus on Intrusions, which vary from holding onto negative comments about our art to doubts that hinder moving forward with the things we want to create. These voices often come forward in times of crisis and shut many artists down. (Soma)tic Rituals can be used to remain focused, always treating our creativity like a vital organ.

 

Former US-Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith wrote in The New York Times, “CAConrad’s poems invite the reader to become an agent in a joint act of recovery, to step outside of passivity and propriety and to become susceptible to the illogical and the mysterious.”

This talk will be conducted in English.

CAConrad

Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | CAConrad | Forum Dança
CAConrad © Sarah White

CAConrad has worked with the ancient technologies of poetry and ritual since 1975.

Their latest book is Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return (Wave Books / UK Penguin 2024).

They received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a PEN Josephine Miles Award, a Creative Capital grant, a Pew Fellowship, and a Lambda Award.

The Book of Frank is now available in 9 different languages, and they coedited SUPPLICATION: Selected Poems of John Wieners (Wave Books).

They exhibit poems as art objects with recent solo shows in Tucson, Arizona, as well as in Spain and Portugal.

They teach at the Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam.

Please visit them here.

General information

Date

7th May 2025, from 18h00 to 20h00

 

Venue
Forum Dança – Espaço da Penha
Travessa do Calado, 26B, 1170-070 Lisboa

 

Free entry, subject to capacity.

Top picture © DR

PACAP 8 / Mystery School lectures

Support and Partnerships

Co-Production PACAP 8: Culturgest | Teatro do Bairro Alto | Anda & Fala | Walk e Talk | Goethe-Institut Portugal, in the scope of Kulturfest festival.

Co-producer in Residency PACAP 8: O Espaço do Tempo

Support PACAP 8: Alkantara | Casa da Dança – Almada | Fundação GDA | Kees Eijrond Foundation | OPART, E.P.E/Estúdios Victor Córdon | O Rumo do Fumo | Piscina

Forum Dança | Parcerias e Apoios PACAP 8
Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Viktória Kaslik  | Forum Dança

Viktória Kaslik

16 April 2025, from 18h00 to 20h00

Eartnail, wild endive, witch gowan. Bitter in taste, detoxifying in effect, and protector of Gdansk (PL). Dandelion emerged for a co-creative artistic research trajectory hosted by Viktória Kaslik (HU), starting in 2022. Running for more than two years on the axis of the Carpathian basin and the Baltic seashores, making Viktória return to Gdansk twice, it was dandelions leading the inquiry on how contemporary human-made law is shaping the way we relate to land. The inquiry resulted in a protocol in which in her capacity as a jurist, as a performance act, she transferred the legal power she received from the nation-state as a practicing jurist.

 

The protocol invites the reader to establish their relation with dandelions, to eliminate the old legal structures, and to give space to the establishment of dandelion laws to emerge. The protocol was given a visual world by Edyta Majewska-Rosińska (PL), and the transfer of legal power was witnessed and co-performed by Gdansk citizens, and co-choreographed by Aleks Borys (PL).

 

In the lecture, I wish to share the research behind the protocol with you, the journey of working with plant spirits in legal reconfiguration. I invite you to drink dandelion tea together.

Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Viktória Kaslik  | Forum Dança
Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Viktória Kaslik | Forum Dança

“She is growing for the light, to reach the Sun and eventually to become the Moon, living in eternal cyclicality. She is traveling to places where her message needs to be heard, where her nurturing is needed, where water needs to be kept, where the condensed soil needs to be loosened, where the concrete needs to be cracked. Mniszek Lekarski is cracking the concrete with her timing. She came to retrieve our broken fabric. It is not about reclaiming any claim, yet it is sourced and pouring from beyond the physical plant body, from a field of the archetypal dandelion-ness. From the cosmos constituted of an invisible fabric, a semi-terrestrial fascia gluing us, together. She perhaps invites us to rejoin, to ask to see what is, and ask again what laws are.”

 

Quote from Dandelion Feast, a protocol to eliminate legal waste from Earth bodies

This lecture will be conducted in English.

Viktória Kaslik

Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Viktória Kaslik  | Forum Dança
Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Viktória Kaslik | Forum Dança

Viktória Kaslik (b. 1992) has a background in law, artistic research, and ancestral constellations. She was born and raised in the Carpathian Basin. She studied law (MA) in Budapest, and critical and conceptual design (MA) at Design Academy Eindhoven. In her work, she explores the terrain of nature-sourced laws through artistic and practice-based research, writing, artistic collaborations, and consultation. Since 2025, she has been practicing as an ancestral and systemic constellation facilitator.

General information

Date

16th April 2025, from 18h00 to 20h00

 

Venue
Forum Dança – Espaço da Penha
Travessa do Calado, 26B, 1170-070 Lisboa

 

Free entry, subject to capacity.

Top photo © DR

PACAP 8 / Mystery School lectures

Support and Partnerships

Co-Production PACAP 8: Culturgest | Teatro do Bairro Alto | Anda & Fala | Walk e Talk | Goethe-Institut Portugal, in the scope of Kulturfest festival.

Co-producer in Residency PACAP 8: O Espaço do Tempo

Support PACAP 8: Alkantara | Casa da Dança – Almada | Fundação GDA | Kees Eijrond Foundation | OPART, E.P.E/Estúdios Victor Córdon | O Rumo do Fumo | Piscina

Forum Dança | Parcerias e Apoios PACAP 8
Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Nadia Lauro | Forum Dança

Nadia Lauro

9 April 2025, from 18h00 to 20h00

In this talk as part of the PACAP 8 / MyS cycle, we welcome artist and set designer Nadia Lauro, whose work has been developed in scenic spaces, landscape architecture, museums and other contexts dedicated to the performing and visual arts.

 

Over the last few decades, Lauro has designed scenographies, environments and installations with strong dramaturgical power, collaborating with creators and performers from different countries and artistic areas. Her practice proposes ways of seeing and being together, generating experiences that call for sensitive attention to presence, space and the collective imagination.

 

Nadia Lauro’s participation in this cycle is in line with the thinking behind PACAP 8 / MyS, where choreographic practices, critical thinking, visual landscapes and research into the body and the scene intersect.

This lecture will be conducted in English.

Nadia Lauro

Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Nadia Lauro | Forum Dança
Nadia Lauro © Sophie Laly

Nadia Lauro is a visual artist and set designer. Her work has been developed over several decades in different contexts – from the stage to built landscapes, including museums and galleries. She has designed set designs, environments and installations with strong dramaturgical power, proposing new ways of seeing and being together.

 

She has collaborated with choreographers and artists such as Vera Mantero, Benoît Lachambre, Alain Buffard, Emmanuelle Huynh, Marcelo Evelin, Latifa Laâbissi, Meg Stuart and Jennifer Lacey, with whom he has developed numerous projects. In 2024, she created the Mirror Balls Garden set for Glitch Witch, a choreographic piece by Meg Stuart.

 

She was an associate artist at the Extension Sauvage festival (2014-2022) and has presented her work in various countries in Europe, the United States, Japan and Korea. Her career has been documented in publications such as Jennifer Lacey & Nadia Lauro – dispositifs chorégraphiques (Les Presses du Réel).

 

More info: https://nadialauro.com

General information

Date

9th April 2025, from 18h00 to 20h00

 

Venue
Forum Dança – Espaço da Penha
Travessa do Calado, 26B, 1170-070 Lisboa

 

Free entry, subject to capacity.

Top photo © DR

PACAP 8 / Mystery School lectures

Support and Partnerships

Co-Production PACAP 8: Culturgest | Teatro do Bairro Alto | Anda & Fala | Walk e Talk | Goethe-Institut Portugal, in the scope of Kulturfest festival.

Co-producer in Residency PACAP 8: O Espaço do Tempo

Support PACAP 8: Alkantara | Casa da Dança – Almada | Fundação GDA | Kees Eijrond Foundation | OPART, E.P.E/Estúdios Victor Córdon | O Rumo do Fumo | Piscina

Forum Dança | Parcerias e Apoios PACAP 8
Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Mayfield Brooks | Forum Dança

Mayfield
Brooks

2 April 2025, from 18h00 to 20h00

As part of PACAP 8 / Mystery School, Forum Dança is hosting Mayfield Brooks, an artist who develops an artistic practice that crosses movement, voice, writing and cultivation of the land, intertwining creation, experimentation and ecology. Through improvisation, she investigates forms of listening, disorientation and transformation in the body and in the relationship with the world.

 

Based in Brooklyn, New York, and with a background rooted in pedagogy, performance and ancestral care, Mayfield Brooks has been developing the Improvising While Black methodology, exploring possibilities for embodied liberation and collective practices of presence.

This lecture will be conducted in English.

Mayfield Brooks

Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Mayfield Brooks | Forum Dança
Mayfield Brooks © DR

A performance artist working in movement and voice, urban farmer, writer and pedagogue, she lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she develops the Improvising While Black (IWB) methodology, which explores improvisation as a practice of disorientation, dissidence and ancestral healing.

 

Her work encompasses dance, vocalisation, writing, pedagogy and ritual practices, and has been presented in contexts such as the Museum of Modern Art NYC, The New Museum, Tanzhaus Dusseldorf, Muzeum Susch and The Center for the Less Good Idea in South Africa.

 

He is a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University and was a resident artist at the Danspace Project.

 

She received the Merce Cunningham Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and was nominated for a Bessie Award with the film Whale Fall.

General information

Date

2 April 2025, from 18h00 to 20h00

 

Venue
Forum Dança – Espaço da Penha
Travessa do Calado, 26B, 1170-070 Lisboa

 

Free entry, subject to capacity.

Top photo: Renewal Residency, December 2022, Danspace Project © Ian Douglas/courtesy Danspace Project.

PACAP 8 / Mystery School lectures

Support and Partnerships

Co-Production PACAP 8: Culturgest | Teatro do Bairro Alto | Anda & Fala | Walk e Talk | Goethe-Institut Portugal, in the scope of Kulturfest festival.

Co-producer in Residency PACAP 8: O Espaço do Tempo

Support PACAP 8: Alkantara | Casa da Dança – Almada | Fundação GDA | Kees Eijrond Foundation | OPART, E.P.E/Estúdios Victor Córdon | O Rumo do Fumo | Piscina

Forum Dança | Parcerias e Apoios PACAP 8
Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Justin F. Kennedy | Forum Dança

Justin F. Kennedy

26th March 2025, from 6pm to 8pm

As part of PACAP 8 / Mystery School, Forum Dança is hosting Justin F. Kennedy, an artist with a career that spans dance, dramaturgy and vocal performance. Kennedy investigates speculative ways of being in community, crossing science fiction operas, urban interventions and collective practices.

This talk will be conducted in English.

More information soon.

Justin F. Kennedy

Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Justin F. Kennedy | Forum Dança
Justin F. Kennedy

Justin F. Kennedy is a community dance and voice artist, teacher, DJ and playwright, born in St Croix, US Virgin Islands, and living in Berlin. His research focuses on transformation through dance and song, expanding into science fiction operas, urban interventions, film and installations. She has collaborated with artists such as Joy Mariama Smith and Ligia Lewis and presented projects in spaces such as the Hammer Museum, Galerie Wedding and Volksbühne. He has taught at SNDO Amsterdam and Bard College Berlin.

General information

Date

26th March 2025, from 18:00 to 20:00

 

Venue
Forum Dança – Espaço da Penha
Travessa do Calado, 26B, 1170-070 Lisboa

 

Free entry, subject to capacity.

Top photo © Julie Nymann

PACAP 8 / Mystery School lectures

Support and Partnerships

Co-Production PACAP 8: Culturgest | Teatro do Bairro Alto | Anda & Fala | Walk e Talk | Goethe-Institut Portugal, in the scope of Kulturfest festival.

Co-producer in Residency PACAP 8: O Espaço do Tempo

Support PACAP 8: Alkantara | Casa da Dança – Almada | Fundação GDA | Kees Eijrond Foundation | OPART, E.P.E/Estúdios Victor Córdon | O Rumo do Fumo | Piscina

Forum Dança | Parcerias e Apoios PACAP 8
Forum Dança - João dos Santos Martins | PACAP 4

João dos Santos Martins

20 March 2025, at 18h30
Espaço da Penha – Lisbon
Approximate duration: 2 hours

Free entry, subject to capacity and prior enrolment here.

Bio

João dos Santos Martins (Santarém, 1989) is an artist whose work encompasses dance, exploring formats such as choreography, exhibition and publishing.
His practice articulates collaborative modes of making that focus on issues of transmission, memory, repertoire and paradoxes in the activity of dancing. He has created pieces such as ‘Projecto Continuado’ (2015) – SPA Authors Prize – and ‘Companhia’ (2018), with Ana Rita Teodoro, Clarissa Sacchelli, Daniel Pizamiglio, Filipe Pereira and Sabine Macher, ‘Antropocenas’ (2017) with Ritó Natálio or ‘Está Visto’ (2023) with Joana Sá, Ana Jotta and Filipe Pereira.
As a dancer he has performed works by Moriah Evans, Ana Rita Teodoro, Xavier Le Roy, Eszter Salamon, Boris Charmatz, Marcelo Evelin, Jérôme Bel, Rui Horta, among others.
Her interest in the genealogies of dance history led her to create, together with Ana Bigotte Vieira, a device to map dance in Portugal – ‘Para Uma Timeline a Haver’ – and to found a biannual journal – ‘Coreia’ – dedicated to writings by artists and about the arts. She occasionally writes and curates. In 2014 she founded Parasita, an artists’ association of which she is a member.

About the lecture cycle “My Dance History”

 

“All of us, dancers, choreographers or performers, have received in some way and by some route, more academic or more self-taught, an idea of the History of Dance, or the History of the Performing Arts, from which we feel “descended” (and perhaps we feel descended from several Histories at the same time!). There were certainly choreographic or scenic creators who made us understand the art we make the way we understand it today. Each one has a specific idea of how that History unfolded, and for each one there are certain creators and certain movements and artistic currents that contributed to configure the idea of dance that you have and practice and that, in some way, is responding to that History. These lectures will give us the opportunity to know the History of Dance that each one has created within themselves.”
Vera Mantero

 

Participants
Ana Borralho & João Galante, André Lepecki, António Pinto Ribeiro, Christine de Smedt, Clara Andermatt, Cláudia Dias, Cristina Planas Leitão, Eszter Salamon, Francisco Camacho, Gil Mendo, Gustavo Ciríaco, Jennifer Lacey, Jeroen Peeters, João Fiadeiro, Joclécio Azevedo, Jonathan Burrows, La Ribot, Lia Rodrigues, Ligia Lewis, Lisa Nelson, Loïc Touzé, Madalena Victorino, Marcela Levi, Marcelo Evelin, Margarida Bettencourt, Mark Tompkins, Meg Stuart, Mette Edvardsen, Miguel Pereira, Nadia Lauro, Olga Roriz, Panaibra Gabriel Canda, Rui Horta, Sofia Dias & Vitor Roriz, Sofia Neuparth, Sónia Baptista, Susan Klein, Vânia Rovisco, Vera Mantero, Xavier Le Roy.

 

The lecture series My Dance History is a project developed since 2011 by O Rumo do Fumo and Forum Dança. The project, initially implemented in Lisbon, was also presented in Viseu, Funchal and Barcelona, in partnership with: Teatro Viriato, Dançando com a Diferença and La Poderosa. The cycle has been hosted by: Edifício (LX Factory), Espaço da Penha, Lisbon Library Network and Victor Córdon/OPART Studios.

 

Rumo do Fumo and Forum Dança are structures financed by the Portuguese Republic – Culture / Directorate-General for the Arts. Project supported by the program contract with the Lisbon City Council / Municipal Directorate of Culture / Division of the Library Network.

Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Nina Lekic | Forum Dança

Nina Lekic

12th March 2025, from 6pm to 8pm

As part of PACAP 8 / Mystery School, Forum Dança is hosting Nina Lekic for a talk that delves into the unknown as a space for knowledge and creation. With a spontaneous approach, this session crosses influences from astrology, mythology and psychology, exploring the relationship between mystery, intuition and artistic practice.

This lecture will be conducted in English and the invited person will be present via video-conference.

Nina Lekic

Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Nina Lekic | Forum Dança
Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Nina Lekic | Forum Dança

I am Nina Lekic, born in Podgorica, Montenegro and this is also where I live.
I graduated Applied Computer Engineering, and I have never dreamed that I would be doing what I am doing now.
I was studying astrology for myself all my life. I was using it as a self-healing tool and as something that takes me deeper on the journey of the soul.
I started working with Moon Omens during pandemic, in 2020., and I am in the most amazing team of people since then.
I am writing big monthly horoscopes, yearly horoscopes and books. I am also recording New and Full Moon videos every two weeks.
I am combining Vedic astrology, western astrology, Hellenistic astrology, mythology, psychology, ancient teachings and occult teachings.

General information

Date

12th March 2025, from 18h00 to 20h00

 

Venue
Forum Dança – Espaço da Penha
Travessa do Calado, 26B, 1170-070 Lisboa

 

Free entry, subject to capacity.

Top photo © DR

PACAP 8 / Mystery School lectures

Support and Partnerships

Co-Production PACAP 8: Culturgest | Teatro do Bairro Alto | Anda & Fala | Walk e Talk | Goethe-Institut Portugal, in the scope of Kulturfest festival.

Co-producer in Residency PACAP 8: O Espaço do Tempo

Support PACAP 8: Alkantara | Casa da Dança – Almada | Fundação GDA | Kees Eijrond Foundation | OPART, E.P.E/Estúdios Victor Córdon | O Rumo do Fumo | Piscina

Forum Dança | Parcerias e Apoios PACAP 8
Maria José Arjona (1973) is a Colombian multidisciplinary performance artist whose
work proposes through radical poetic gestures a unique form of political resistance.
At a time when political art is understood primarily as political activism, Arjona instead
treats the body as a site for subtle and complex re- articulations and questionings of
normative conditioning and violence. She moves away from a focus on the identity of
the artist to highlight the organic, expansive shared potential of the body, a body that
in its centrality may not be individual or biographical, but collective and
unconditioned.
Arjona is currently a fellow at the DAAD in Berlin and was a visiting scholar at the
department of performance studies at NYU. Her upcoming and most recent
exhibitions, seminars and talks include: “All possible forests” (Seminar) Princeton
University, “Moving with Rocks” LASA 2025, “Rivers” Biennial Of Guatemala, “Silent
but together” at The Museum Of Contemporary Art Of Barcelona, “The good life" at
The Museum Of Modern Art Of Medellin, Zero Point Berlin , Art Basel Miami Beach,
The international Biennial Of Performance (Argentina), “The Body As Archive” a (Talk)
at Museum Of Latin American Art Of Buenos Aires (MALBA).

Maria Jose Arjona

26th February 2025, from 6pm to 8pm

This online seminar draws upon “As It Is Inside, So It Is Outside”, a project exhibited at NC Arte in Bogotá (COL) in the wake of the pandemic. Emerging from a network of encounters, transformations, and visions, it reflects on the radical generosity that arises in times of crisis and the formation of temporary communities willing to embrace the unknown as a space of possibility. Spanning from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta to Bogotá, New York, and Berlin, the project reimagined interactions between non-human entities and a gathering of alchemists, biologists, dancers, sound artists, architects, oracles, anthropologists, chefs, and designers.

 

Building on these explorations, this seminar invites participants into a space of collective reflection and speculation, where mystery unfolds in the unspoken transmission of movement, the affective architectures emerging between bodies, the vibrational resonance of voices, and the invisible yet deeply felt shifts in molecular motion.

This lecture will be conducted in English and the invited person will be present via video-conference.

Maria Jose Arjona

Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Maria Jose Arjona | Forum Dança
Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Maria Jose Arjona | Forum Dança

Maria José Arjona (1973) is a Colombian multidisciplinary performance artist whose work proposes through radical poetic gestures a unique form of political resistance. At a time when political art is understood primarily as political activism, Arjona instead treats the body as a site for subtle and complex re- articulations and questionings of normative conditioning and violence. She moves away from a focus on the identity of the artist to highlight the organic, expansive shared potential of the body, a body that in its centrality may not be individual or biographical, but collective and unconditioned.

 

Arjona is currently a fellow at the DAAD in Berlin and was a visiting scholar at the department of performance studies at NYU. Her upcoming and most recent exhibitions, seminars and talks include: “All possible forests” (Seminar) Princeton University, “Moving with Rocks” LASA 2025, “Rivers” Biennial Of Guatemala, “Silent but together” at The Museum Of Contemporary Art Of Barcelona, “The good life” at The Museum Of Modern Art Of Medellin, Zero Point Berlin , Art Basel Miami Beach, The international Biennial Of Performance (Argentina), “The Body As Archive” a (Talk) at Museum Of Latin American Art Of Buenos Aires (MALBA).

General information

Date

26th February 2025, from 18h00 to 20h00

 

Venue
Forum Dança – Espaço da Penha
Travessa do Calado, 26B, 1170-070 Lisboa

 

Free entry, subject to capacity.

Top photo © DR

PACAP 8 / Mystery School lectures

Support and Partnerships

Co-Production PACAP 8: Culturgest | Teatro do Bairro Alto | Anda & Fala | Walk e Talk | Goethe-Institut Portugal, in the scope of Kulturfest festival.

Co-producer in Residency PACAP 8: O Espaço do Tempo

Support PACAP 8: Alkantara | Casa da Dança – Almada | Fundação GDA | Kees Eijrond Foundation | OPART, E.P.E/Estúdios Victor Córdon | O Rumo do Fumo | Piscina

Forum Dança | Parcerias e Apoios PACAP 8
Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Ezequiel Santos | Forum Dança

Ezequiel Santos

19th February 2025, at 16:30

Portuguese Dance as an Appeal to the Drive for Destiny – A Psychoanalytic Reading

As part of PACAP 8/‘Mystery School’, Ezequiel Santos gives a lecture that proposes a unique approach to dance in Portugal, exploring it as a territory where myth, history and the body intertwine. Through a reading inspired by psychoanalysis, this reflection invites us to think about dance beyond its chronologies and facts, highlighting it as a space of timeless resonances and cultural fictions that manifest themselves in dancing bodies.

As this is the inaugural lecture of the ‘Mystery School’, I propose a descent below the visible plane of facts and chronologies and revisit Portuguese dance through the mythology configured in the very history that the Portuguese have lived. This is a reading inspired by psychoanalysis, which calls for the recovery of the drive for destiny, the understanding of timeless resonances, the description of a mission that has been fulfilled through the spirit, materialised in active cultural fictions that are installed in dancing bodies. Bodies that, under the appearance of the present, carry antiquity within them. | Ezequiel Santos

This lecture will be conducted in English.

Ezequiel Santos

Palestras PACAP 8 / MyS | Ezequiel Santos | Forum Dança
Ezequiel Santos © Ricardo Bastos

Psychologist, psychotherapist, university lecturer in Social Sciences and Humanities, and researcher at INET-md (FMH). He has a PhD in Contemporary Art (CAUC) and has participated in research projects linking the performing arts, social sciences and digital technologies.

 

He completed CMD II at Forum Dança in 1992 and worked as a performer with choreographers Madalena Victorino, Rui Nunes and Francisco Camacho. Between 1996 and 2006 he was director of Forum Dança’s Choreographic Support Centre, with intense collaboration in international networks of artists and producers.

 

His interests span several disciplines, predominantly in the thematic areas of dance history, the phenomenology of aesthetic experience, Art Based Research and ecotopias.

General information

Date

19th February 2025, 16:30

 

Venue
Forum Dança – Espaço da Penha
Travessa do Calado, 26B, 1170-070 Lisboa

 

Free entry, subject to capacity.

Top photo © Ricardo Bastos

PACAP 8 / Mystery School lectures

Support and Partnerships

Co-Production PACAP 8: Culturgest | Teatro do Bairro Alto | Anda & Fala | Walk e Talk | Goethe-Institut Portugal, in the scope of Kulturfest festival.

Co-producer in Residency PACAP 8: O Espaço do Tempo

Support PACAP 8: Alkantara | Casa da Dança – Almada | Fundação GDA | Kees Eijrond Foundation | OPART, E.P.E/Estúdios Victor Córdon | O Rumo do Fumo | Piscina

Forum Dança | Parcerias e Apoios PACAP 8
Performers dancing against a white wall

PACAP 8
2025

Performing Arts Advanced Programme

Meg Stuart

From 10th of February to 26th of July 2025

Applications closed.

“Every new beginning
leads you to a mystery.
Every beginning carries
that potential of the unknown.
It relates to how we move,
how we hear, how we listen,
how we spend time with something,
how we see what is around us.”
Meg Stuart

Introduction

PACAP 8 / Mystery School of Choreography
Concept and Artistic Direction: Meg Stuart
Artistic Collaboration: Ana Rocha

Proposal

Forum Dança invites choreographer Meg Stuart as a curator for the 8th edition of PACAP to take place in Lisbon, 2025, who proposes her concept and project Mystery School of Choreography. For this edition, Meg Stuart has invited Ana Rocha as artistic collaborator.

 

Mystery School of Choreography (MyS) is an unconventional experimental studies programme for performing artists. It’s a place where fascination for the metaphysical will be intertwined with composition, choreography, and art making.

 

During these six months, from February to July 2025, we will work in the studio at Forum Dança, in the theatre space at Teatro do Bairro Alto, in the galleries at Culturgest, surrounded by nature and far from the Portuguese capital at O Espaço do Tempo, Montemor-o-Novo, and in São Miguel Island, Azores, in Walk&Talk Biennial. From the indoor space to the street, we will go through these residencies together for reflection and practice.

 

MyS will consist of encounters with artists who will share their personal cosmology, expertise, and process. Participants will approach MyS themes through moments of reflection and, above all, through collective moments of performance and dialogue. MyS proposes to create a space that is not about converting or indoctrinating, but about revealing and creating structures for the process of sharing.

 

How can we connect to that knowledge more precisely? By starting from a position of not-knowing. MyS seeks to cultivate the attitude of the beginner, letting go and shedding expectations. By starting from what fascinates us, we are also practicing a sense of wonder, a lucid dreaming together. We will be guided by nature, cause and effect, energetic transformation, disorientation and divination, sacred geometry, rhythmic visions and voice, alchemy, love and politics, non-locality and quantum physics, deep and inner contemplation.

 

MyS takes transmission of hidden knowledge and insights, which are not accessible through conventional means, as a foundation of learning and creating art through a shared exploration.

 

MyS will focus on questions that go beyond purely physical practices and can be explored in a collective dimension, such as:

 

How can we foster imagination in ourselves in correlation with our surroundings?
How can we (re)align our research processes within an interdimensional wonder?
How can we negotiate and learn from indeterminacy, non-defined corporeal spaces, and invisible realms as much as fictional futures?
How can we create a more holistic, compassionate understanding of it?
How do we share fascination?
How do we value different functions and forms, different kinds of material and research?
How do we develop and cultivate a fountain of creative collaboration with energies, seen and unseen forces?

 

MyS is a step towards a deeper understanding of learning, practice, and activation of knowledge that is often present in performing arts but not directly addressed. In MyS we will sketch possibilities for the future of dance and community.

Participants

PACAP 8 / MyS programme is designed as a transformative journey. At MyS, we will work together: environmentally aware, socially engaged, going through metaphysical access to transform deep learning into a political act. We will work together with the body and the voice, with critical perceptive thinking.

 

We are looking for experienced professional performance artists open to work in a collective art programme. Makers and dreamers who have a strong interest in the interweaving of the metaphysical and art, with a generosity of spirit, free-thinkers, open for a shared, rigorous and playful exploration of the unknown. MyS programme looks for participants who have done inner emotional work, grounded, nonconformist, sensitive to other’s processes and highly motivated. Participants are required to be flexible, passionate about improvisation, open to chance procedures and experimental structures.

 

During the MyS programme, be ready to let go of preconceived notions, be willing to trust a collective process and design other possible futures through an experimental, intensive, and rigorous process. Participants will have the opportunity to research and compose in various formats and settings. MyS is a six-month collaborative programme, where participants will be co-creators and collaborators with nature, forces unknown and invited artists.

Information

Invited guests

  • Benoît Lachambre
  • CAConrad
  • Doug Weiss
  • Gaya de Medeiros
  • Isabela Santana
  • Justin F. Kennnedy
  • Keith Hennessy
  • Márcio Kerber Canabarro
  • Maria F. Scaroni
  • Mariana Tengner Barros
  • Mayfield Brooks
  • Mieko Suzuki
  • Odete
  • Renan Martins
  • Sigal Zouk
  • Xullaji

 

… and others to be confirmed.

Language

English will be the official language of the programme.

 

Please note!
Applications must be sent in English.

Dates

  • Applications deadline 31.05.2024
  • Results Pre-selection 17.06.2024
  • Audition Workshop 29.07.2024 – 03.08.2024
  • Final Results 30.09.2024
  • Programme dates 10.02.2025 – 26.07.2025

Schedule

Intensive and flexible schedule. An overview of the working hours will be sent before the beginning of the programme.

Applications

Elements to be sent:

 

  • CV + 1 photo
  • 3 short video works of your artistic work, including as maker & collaborative projects (Vimeo/ YouTube link)
  • 1 video of something you never did before
  • 1 motivation letter + 1 MyS score in the form of: e.g. texts or images (2 pgs. max.), inspired by the questions below:

 

    • What do you dream of learning at MyS?
    • Who are your heroes, ancestors, and artistic influences?
    • What does mystery / magic mean to you? Define it.
    • What spiritual experiences inform your artistic work?
    • It will be a collective space. What skills can you offer a group? What are your special powers? What kind of daily practice do you have, how do you organize yourself?
    • What keeps you up at night? What topics obsessed you? What do you need to let go of?
    • Are you comfortable with silence?
    • What’s love got to do with it?

! IMPORTANT NOTE!

We do not accept links that require downloading videos.

The links sent must give direct access to the online visualization of the files (YouTube, Vimeo, etc).

The only files that require downloading that we will accept are the Curriculum vitae, the photo and the motivational letter.

Tuition fees

    • Registration: 200€;
    • Payment in full: 2000€;
    • Payment in two installments: 1100€ x 2.

 

Please do not let financial concerns prevent you from applying.

If the tuition is a cause of concern for you, please include a letter in your application explaining your financial situation.

Scholarships

There are a few scholarships available:

 

    • 2 scholarships offering a 50% reduction of the tuition fees.
    • 1 scholarship offering 100% reduction of the tuition fees, aimed at artists from Portuguese Speaking African Countries or Black artists living in Portugal.
    • Artists residing in Portugal are eligible for up to 50% reduction of the tuition fees through scholarships given out by the GDA Foundation (In cases where the applicant is a member of the GDA this increases up to 75%).

Application

Until 31st May 2024

Form

Please note!
Applications and all documentation must be sent in English.

 

Applications are closed.

Bios

Meg Stuart

Forum Dança | PACAP 8 - Meg Stuart
Meg Stuart © Camille Blake

Choreographer, director, and dancer who lives and works in Berlin and Brussels. With her company, Damaged Goods, founded in 1994, she has created over thirty productions, ranging from solos and duets to group pieces, video works, site-specific creations and improvisation projects.

Stuart’s work moves freely between the genres of dance, theater and visual arts, driven by an ongoing dialogue with artists from different disciplines.

Through fictions and shifting narrative layers, she explores dance as a source of healing and a way to transform the social fabric.

Improvisation is an important part of Stuart’s practice, as a strategy to move from physical and emotional states or the memory of them.

Meg Stuart has received many awards for her work, notably the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Biennale di Venezia in 2018, and she was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2023.

More informations: www.damagedgoods.be

Ana Rocha

Forum Dança | PACAP 8 - Ana Rocha
Ana Rocha

Curator, choreographer, performer, playwright, and a teacher. She has been a producer of visual arts, music and performing arts (theatre/contemporary dance), and also works as a production manager for cultural projects.

 

She mediates in the field of Culture and the Arts, creating a research language of artistic and socio-political action engaged in the potential development of the creative process and its context.

 

Ana operates in fields of multiplicity and cultural diversity, co-relating points of reflection and transition, by accompanying and consulting institutions, non-profit organizations, artistic collectives, and national and international creators.

Participants

Ana Szopa (PL), António Bollaño (PT), Arash Khakpour (IR), Emily da Silva (BR), Guillermo Tarasewicz (UY), Isabela Rossi (BR/IT), iSaAc iSaBeL Espinoza Hidrobo (EC), Julia Kosałka (PL), Kaya Freeman (PT), María Ibarretxe (ES), Martha Kotsia (GR), Michiru Shin (JP), Natacha Campos (PT), Raul Aranha (IN), Salomé Pham-Van-Hué (FR), Sepideh Khodarahmi (SE/IR), Śomi Śniegocka (PL), Therese Bendjus (DE) and Tiago Vieira (PT).

PACAP 8 Activities

PACAP 8 / Mystery School lectures

Support and Partnerships

Co-Production PACAP 8: Culturgest | Teatro do Bairro Alto | Anda & Fala | Walk e Talk | Goethe-Institut Portugal, in the scope of Kulturfest festival.

Co-producer in Residency PACAP 8: O Espaço do Tempo

Support PACAP 8: Alkantara | Casa da Dança – Almada | Fundação GDA | Kees Eijrond Foundation | OPART, E.P.E/Estúdios Victor Córdon | O Rumo do Fumo | Piscina

Forum Dança | Parcerias e Apoios PACAP 8

Top image credits © Vitorino Coragem

[“Archives for future Spells”, Culturgest 2025]

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