Regular Classes

With Maria Ramos

Wednesdays | 19h30-21h30

We work on the relationship of the body with space.

We read our favorite authors to think better about composition, landscape, geography, and architecture.

We invent rules, activate invisible structures, and discover ‘events’. Sometimes we map movement, sometimes movement goes off the map.

We make performances in which we are all, simultaneously, audience, authors, and performers.

Regular Dance creation and experimentation classes, organized by quarterly cycles, with informal sharing every three months throughout the academic year.
From the practices and methodologies of improvisation-composition that I have been developing in the context of my choreographic and pedagogical work, we will, at first, create a ‘body’ (individual body and collective body) and, later, create performative events approaching the body’s relationship with space, with sound, with objects, with images and texts (in a gradual, plural and four-dimensional movement).
The object of study will be to analyze the ‘rules’ of the ‘game’ (improvisation structure, composition, map, score-score) so that we can then go on transgressing the ‘rules’ and discover performative proposals in which we are all, simultaneously, ‘builders’ and interpreters.
Throughout the academic year, we also have occasional guests (choreographers/dancers), who will develop a work proposal with the group during a certain period of time.

References & research territories
Goat Island Performance Group; Deborah Hay; Angus Balbernie; Antony Gormley; Alberto Carneiro; Barry Lopez; Meg Stuart; Samuel Beckett; Nick Cave & Warren Ellis; Robert Ellis Dunn (improvisation and choreography classes); Mary Fulkerson; Mary Overlie (The Six Viewpoints)

Guests from previous years
Joana Pupo (PT), Jaime Mears (AU-PT), Ana Mira (PT), Sara Anjo (PT), Teresa Silva (PT), Angus Balbernie (UK), Christy Funsch (USA)

Organization of the Choreographic Laboratory 2022-2023
Laboratory classes are regular and the work unfolds and develops throughout the school year. Participants may commit to one, two or three work cycles, each cycle corresponding to three months of classes (approximately thirteen sessions).

• Cycle 1 – September-December, informal sharing with an invited audience on 14 December.
  In the context of this Work Cycle, we will count on the actress and creator Joana Pupo, who will guide the Laboratory sessions from October 26th to November 30th.
• Cycle 2 – January-March, informal sharing with an invited public on the 29th of March.
• Cycle 3 – April-June, informal sharing with an invited public on the 28th of June.

Target Audience
Classes open to anyone interested in developing and deepening their knowledge in the field of dance composition.
Over the years, we have had cohesive and heterogeneous groups, from participants from non-artistic professional areas (science, social areas, sports), to dancers/choreographers and artists from other areas such as cinema, visual arts, plastic arts, music, theater, which has generated a very stimulating and enriching multiplicity of perspectives.

Clothes / Material
Practical and comfortable clothes so that we can move freely and that also protect the body for when we do floor work (long-sleeved pants and t-shirt). Some work proposals will extend beyond the studio, in which case it’s good to bring a coat and comfortable shoes. Bottle of water, notebook and pen.

In Lisbon, he studied Dance with Amélia Bentes, Sofia Neuparth, Peter Michael Dietz, Francisco Camacho and Clara Andermatt. In the Netherlands, she graduated in Dance at the Hogeschool voor de Kunst in Arnhem (HKA-EDDC), 2000, and completed her master’s degree in Choreography at the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts, 2008. She highlights her work with teachers/choreographers/dancers Mary Fulkerson , Eva Karczag, Lisa Kraus, Gil Clarke, João da Silva, Angus Balbernie, Steve Paxton, Ric Allsopp, Ivana Müller, Karen Nelson, Lisa Nelson, Jonathan Burrows, Matthew Goulish and Lin Hixson (Goat Island Performance Group) Deborah Hay and Ivone Rainer (from whom he learned “Trio A”).

As a dancer, she highlights her work with choreographer Angus Balbernie, with whom she collaborated between 2000-2009. As a choreographer, she highlights the works 7 pm/Rumour, Nerves, Something Still and Árida, projects supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and DGArtes in co-production with several national and international theatres. During the process of creating the solo 7pm/Rumour, Maria consulted the sculptor Antony Gormley, with whom she had the opportunity to exchange correspondence regarding notions about Body and Space in the context of Sculpture and Dance, an investigation that triggered the creation of her choreographic works.

She teaches Contemporary Dance Technique, Interpretation, Creation / Interpretation and Improvisation in the Degree in Dance at Escola Superior de Dança (ESD) and Advanced Body Workshop in the Degree in Theater at ESAD.CR. As part of her pedagogical practice, she develops the collaborative project ‘Classes and Dance Practices, Today’, pedagogical meetings between teacher-artists, with the support of Forum Dança, c.e.m, Estúdios Victor Córdon and ESD.

In the context of her choreographic work, she has articles published in the Dutch Society for Dance Research and ArtEZ Press.

personal website ››

Pre-registration on-line

Registration process

1. Pre-register online using the form provided bellow.
2. Wait for our email with payment instructions.
3. Pay your registration, as indicated in the email sent.
4. Send the respective payment receipt to our email.
5. Your registration will only be validated after we receive your proof of payment.

With Josefa Pereira, Bárbara Faustino and Natália Mendonça

Tuesdays | 19h30-21h30
Thursdays | 19h30-21h30

“Forum Dança’s Contemporary Dance classes will be conducted through a multiple and collective experience proposed by Josefa Pereira in partnership with the artists Alina Ruiz Folini, Bárbara Faustino and Natália Mendonça. The proposal is to provide a meeting space in which the alternation between the three artists enables a context of sharing and transit so that different body practices intersect both in what they have in common and in the specificities that each artist and their work proposals will allow to experience.

From this exchange between teachers/artists and students/artists, we intend to provide a context of experimentation that activates in each participant the availability and readiness necessary for a stroll through practices that have in common, to seek to provide the experience of creative tools through dance and the body in movement.

In our classes, different techniques and trainings are not an end in themselves, but a resource for a more powerful and self-aware body. From there, we seek to enable a sensitive, accessible, and porous body, with more vitality and better circulation of energy, more resilient and malleable to its surroundings. Finally, we seek to mobilize a more inventive body that is constantly open to new updates of its ways of being and being.

Tuesday and Thursday classes are aimed at anyone interested in dance and movement practices. So not only dance artists, and beginners, but also people who have no previous experience in body practices are welcome. Curiosity and availability are the only requirements to be with us.”

/ Josefa Pereira

Biographies

Natália Mendonça (BR) is an artist and works as a performer, choreographer and body trainer. She graduated in Dance from UNICAMP and lived in São Paulo for 12 years.
Based in Lisbon since 2020, she develops her own works, collaborates with other choreographers and conducts dance classes at Forum Dança. She is the director and performer of KDEIRAZ, a children’s play in process, supported by the residencies Núcleo A70, Casa da Dança de Almada, Residency Program-O Rumo do Fumo, Estúdios Victor Córdon and LU.CA Accompanied Artistic Residencies. With Josefa Pereira she is a collaborator in the process of the Bestiário Pink trilogy and with Dinis Machado she is a performer in Cyborg Sunday. In 2020 she was a member of PACAP 4, curated by João dos Santos Martins.

In São Paulo, her main partnerships are with: Clarice Lima (2010-2021) and Cristian Duarte (2014-2021). She was part of the artistic nucleus of projects with: Marta Soares, Elisabete Finger, Cia Perversos Polimorfos, Jorge Garcia, the Guatemalan artist Naufus Ramirez Figueroa. In 2016, she premiered her first authorial solo, Marcela Banguela, a project contemplated by PROAC-Primeiras Obras de Dança. Since 2018, she has been a body coach at ColetivA Ocupação, a group formed by artists who met during the uprising of the high school movement in São Paulo, between 2015 and 2016.

Pre-registration on-line

Registration process

1. Pre-register online using the form provided bellow.
2. Wait for our email with payment instructions.
3. Pay your registration, as indicated in the email sent.
4. Send the respective payment receipt to our email.
5. Your registration will only be validated after we receive your proof of payment.