CTR_summer
From 25th to 30th August 2025
From 2pm to 7pm
In the last week of August, João Fiadeiro will lead an intensive CTR workshop with performer/choreographer Márcia Lança and architect/visual artist João Gonçalo Lopes, focusing on the concept of ‘prepared space’ (like John Cage’s ‘prepared piano’), which will function as a territory for exploring and experimenting with Real-Time Composition.
The prior preparation of the improvisation space creates a set of reliefs and restrictions in the place which, by producing ‘obstacles’ to the experience of improvisation, force it to happen in continuous negotiation with the environment in which it takes place, in an experience close to what it would be like to work in a site-specific environment. If we understand these obstructions as conditions rather than constraints, the space and the objects placed in it will themselves have agency, creating a relationship of dialogue and reciprocity between the performance and the place, the main object of study of this workshop.
Information
Select each of the sections below to find out more about the workshop and the enrolment process.
Who it's for
This workshop is aimed at artists with experience in improvisation but is open to anyone who identifies with the premise of the proposal and feels available and comfortable experimenting with composition and improvisation practices with the body.
Schedule
From 25 to 30 August 2025, from 14h00 to 19h00.
Venue
Forum Dança / Espaço da Penha
Travessa do Calado, 26B
1170-070 Lisboa
Participation fee
-
- Registration: 150 €;
Pre-registration
Pre-registration is done using the form available on our website and will be validated once proof of payment has been received and sent to our email address.
Registration process
- Pre-register online using the form provided;
- Wait for our email with payment instructions;
- Pay your registration fee as indicated in the email sent to you;
- Send us proof of payment to our email address;
- Your registration will only be validated once we have received your receipt.
Application form
All fields are mandatory.
Bios
João Fiadeiro
João Fiadeiro (1965) is a Portuguese performer, choreographer, researcher, teacher and curator.
He belongs to the generation of artists that emerged at the end of the 1980s in Portugal and gave rise to the New Portuguese Dance movement.
In the 1990s he studied and practised Contact-Improvisation intensively, which led him to pursue and systematise his own research into improvisation under the name Real-Time Composition. This research has led him to coordinate workshops in master’s and doctoral programmes at various schools and universities around the world.
He has toured extensively in Europe, North America and South America with his solo and group works.
His career, whether as a choreographer or performer, or as a researcher or curator, has centred on creating conditions for experimentation, laboratory practice and interdisciplinary cross-fertilisation.
This activity has been carried out both within the framework of directing artistic programming and research projects, which have included the Centro Cultural da Malaposta (1990-95), Espaço Ginjal (1995-1998), Lugar Comum (1999-2000), Espaço A Capital (2000-2002) and Atelier Re.AL (2004-2019), and within the framework of his artistic practice, through creations and research workshops organised around Real-Time Composition.
Atelier Re.AL was a structure that played a leading role in the development of contemporary dance and transdisciplinary initiatives in Portugal.
In all these different meeting platforms, João Fiadeiro was always accompanied by artists who actively participated as creators, performers, researchers and programme-makers, making a decisive contribution to the existence of this project over 30 years of uninterrupted activity.
Márcia Lança
Márcia Lança was born in Beja and lives in Lisbon. In 2008 she founded VAGAR, of which she is artistic director. She has worked as a choreographer and performer in various collaborative configurations.
She moves in territories where the boundaries between the fictional and the real are tenuous and diffuse. Her interest in the poetic materiality of concrete actions and tasks is at the centre of her creative processes.
She is passionate about emergent collective compositions, thought as action and situated constructions.
João Gonçalo Lopes
João Gonçalo Lopes is an architect who works in various disciplines between art, design and education. Having had diverse experience in different parts of the globe, he currently works with a hands-on approach on scales ranging from urban design to art installations and furniture design.
With a context-based attitude, his work is rooted in processes of collaboration and community building, focusing on the ecology of materials as a means of achieving conscious and complex realities.
He values spaces and objects that exist as facilitators of experience. To do this, he uses a wide range of tools that come from different disciplines, be they social, political, artistic, constructive or spatial.
More information, here.
General Note
For those wishing to take part in any of our CTR transmission and practice programmes
Even though we are committed to creating a safe place of practice, sustained by a work ethic based on principles of care and mutual respect, the experience of improvisation and performance, by definition, can take performers to places of intense sharing, often vulnerable and emotionally charged, where doubt and error have a prominent place. When signing up, bear in mind that in this practice you may find yourself in situations of experimentation that shake up your comfort zones, even if only temporarily.