Title Image

Programming

EMILY DA SILVA, ISABELA ROSSI AND MARÍA IBARRETXE

COWBOYS CORNER

Forum Dança | May 8, 2026 | 6.30 pm

‘ Amid encounters with the invisible—as if we were herding a herd of oxen that only our eyes can see – COWBOYS CORNER summons ghosts, haunts itself, and plays with the audience, as if we were all being herded toward a land about to be invaded by those who seek a sense of belonging in society, in life, in the world. We gather in a suspended space-time, where word, body, and symbol begin to weave a shared tapestry. ‘

Concept, direction and performance Emily da Silva, Isabela Rossi, María Ibarretxe

Dramaturgy Ana Rocha

Photo © Vitorino Coragem

Biographies

Emily da Silva

Emily da Silva is a Brazilian dancer, performer, and choreographer based in Lisbon. In her work, she explores the body’s use of circularity, spirals, swaying, and swaying as tools for vibrating and transforming space-time. She is interested in black holes, tornadoes, and giant waves.

Isabela Rossi

Isabela Rossi moves between dance, performance, and creation. Driven by the curiosity of a wandering body, it is through this physical experience that she explores how the body reconfigures itself in relation to space, revealing tensions and deviations while opening pathways to new imaginaries, encounters, and perspectives.

María Ibarretxe del Val

María Ibarretxe del Val is a visual and performing artist. She combines film, audiovisual creation, sound installations, and choreography, in which the body, the voice, and the participation of others take center stage. She explores cycles of life and death and the colors of the rainbow through site-specific experiences and research in diverse cultural contexts.

TIAGO VIEIRA

PAGAN POETRY

Forum Dança |  May 8, 2026 | 6.30 pm

PAGAN POETRY stems from a desire to inhabit a choreographic landscape—a space for forging connections and giving rise to rituals—as well as from the two notebooks I kept during the Mysthery School process, which, going beyond a mere diary, serve as a kind of cartography of aphorisms, memories, thoughts, ideas, and the powers of the imagination.
The aim is to create an encounter where ritual language breaks down the boundaries between the divine and the profane. I am interested in the intimate relationship between Love and Resistance . Poetry as a political gesture, seeking to dignify marginalized bodies—absolute symbols of Difference, Freedom, and Resistance against all fascist systems.

[Tiago Vieira]

Choreography, soundscape, text, costumes, set design, performance: Tiago Vieira

Photo © DR

Biography

Tiago Vieira

A graduate of the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema, he furthered his training through various theater, dance, and performance workshops.

He combines directing with teaching theater and dance. In 2019, he completed a master’s degree at the RITS School in Brussels, where he danced *The Rite of Spring* for 12 hours, undertook a walk that began at a concentration camp near Berlin and ended at Pina Bausch’s grave, and presented his show on the main stage of the KVS THEATRE. In 2020, the show WE MUST ALWAYS FORGIVE COWARDS, BUT NEVER BE LIKE THEM was named by the newspaper Expresso as one of the best shows of the year. In 2024, he launched the company Tiago Vieira e os melancólicos tropicais with the performance Dói mas você goza. In 2025, he began teaching at the Escola Profissional de Cascais and was part of the PACAP project directed by Meg Stuart.

BELMON / THERESE BENDJUS

MONSTROSITY STUDIES // STAGING INNOCENCE

Forum Dança |  May 29, 2026 | 6.30 PM

Monstrosity Studies // Staging Innocence investigates mythological archetypes – monster, beast and devil — as entry points to question what we perceive as evil, dangerous or unsettling. Drawing on my own biography and that of my ancestors, the work traces the intergenerational wounds of predator societies such as Germany between lingering obedience, violence, spiritual and communal disconnect and its residue that remains and informs behavior, emotionality and moral understanding until today. This work is a storm, an unsettling site that collapses structure and unleashes disorientation. A monster awakens – not as single figure but as a collective state.

[Belmon / Therese Bendjus]

Direction and performance Belmon / Therese Bendjus

Photo © Raul Aranha

Biography

Belmon / Therese Bendjus

Belmon / Therese Bendjus is an artist working at the intersection of dance, voice and
material-based research. Building multi-sensorial environments, their work encourages people to be vulnerable and brave with one another. Belmon uses intuitive, improvisational processes to engage with discomfort, togetherness and accountability.
In 2024 they co-founded DESTRUCTION BUREAU together with Asya Ashman – a research on the potentiality of destruction. They hold a BA in Dance, Context and Choreography from HZT Berlin.

Cartografias #6

Presentation cycle

2026 | Forum Dança

Four residencies will be organized at the Núcleo and subsequently presented as part of Cartografias. These residencies are intended for artists who participated in PACAP 8, curated by Meg Stuart, whose works were initiated during that program and are currently in the development phase. The aim of this initiative is to provide ongoing support to artists who participated in previous editions of the program. Selection will be made following an Open Call directed at this group. The residencies will last three weeks, and the presentations will take place in pairs at Espaço da Penha, followed by discussions with the audience.

Programme

May 8

Friday, 6.30 pm

 

Emily da Silva, Isabela Rossi, María Ibarretxe

Cowboys Corner

 

Tiago Vieira

Pagan Poetry

May 29

Friday, 6.30 pm

 

Belmon / Therese Bendjus

Monstrosity Studies // Staging Innocence

 

Isabela Rossi e Julia Kosalka

Lento

Informations

 

forumdança@forumdança.pt

Cartografias #6

Series of presentations

2026 | Forum Dança

We bring back Cartografias cycle with four works that together create a space for reflecting on the body as a living archive, a field of contention and transformation. Their constellation traces a territory where choreographic creation asserts itself as an act of radical listening, symbolic friction and ethical reinvention. Each work opens a distinct fissure, yet all share the impulse to map liminal zones – between the visible and the spectral, the intimate and the political, the mythical and the biographical – building on the atmosphere created by these artists during their participation in PACAP 8, directed by Meg Stuart.

 

Thus, in COWBOYS CORNER, the stage becomes a field of active haunting, where bodies and words guide the audience through a landscape of contested belonging. The dramaturgy summons the invisible as choreographic material, producing a suspended space-time that questions who may occupy the commons. PAGAN POETRY shifts this investigation towards ritual and the power of language. Drawing on cartographic notebooks, the work proposes an insurgent poetics that dignifies marginalised bodies and affirms love as resistance, dissolving boundaries between the divine and the profane.

 

In Monstrosity Studies // Staging Innocence, monstrosity emerges as a critical tool. The work draws upon myths, genealogies and intergenerational wounds to expose the residues of violence that shape contemporary behaviours and moralities, unleashing a storm that disorients in order to reveal. Finally, LENTO explores queer intimacy through deceleration as a political strategy. Slow-motion movement opens up micro-perceptions where lesbian love breaks away from normative narratives and claims new ways of inhabiting affection.

 

These four proposals emerge from three-week artistic residencies at Forum Dança and invite us to bear witness to their emergence and to exchange with the artists after each performance, so that, together, we may craft thoughts that inspire action and help transform the world.

Programme

May 8, 6.30 pm

Emily da Silva, Isabela Rossi, María Ibarretxe

Cowboys Corner

 

Tiago Vieira

Pagan Poetry

May 29, 6.30 pm

Belmon / Therese Bendjus

Monstrosity Studies // Staging Innocence

 

Isabela Rossi e Julia Kosalka

Lento

Informations

 

forumdança@forumdança.pt

ISABELA ROSSI AND JULIA KOSALKA

LENTO

Forum Dança |  May 29, 2026 | 6.30 pm

‘LENTO is a project that explores intimacy as a space for negotiation and resistance, drawing on the experiences of two queer women. Through choreography that focuses on slow-motion movement, LENTO examines how lesbian love is shaped by social expectations, patriarchal memories, and heteronormative scripts, and how it can be reinvented outside of these frameworks. Slowing down becomes a political and sensory strategy, allowing us to inhabit micro-sensations, contradictions, and vulnerability. Who feels entitled to intimacy, visibility, or belonging?’

[Isabela Rossi & Julia Kosalka]

Concept, creation and performance: Isabela Rossi e Julia Kosalka

Image © Vitorino Coragem

Biographies

Isabela Rossi

Isabela Rossi moves between dance, performance, and creation. Driven by the curiosity of a wandering body, it is through this physical experience that she explores how the body reconfigures itself in relation to space, revealing tensions and deviations while opening pathways to new imaginaries, encounters, and perspectives.

Julia Kosalka

Julia Kosalka moves between dance, performance, and choreography. She has collaborated with Dance Theater Heidelberg, Alina Belyagina, Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe, Renan Martins, and others. In dance, she is interested in collectivity, in queering time and space, and in blending reality with fantasy and fiction.

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