Documentation

Support for research in dance

Forum Dança is also responsible for the construction and maintenance of a Documentation Center — a mixed archive of books, and catalogs, and a media library with DVDs and other media supports, open to the public, artists and specialized researchers that need access to information and documentation on dance and performance.

The documentation center has a book section with about 1000 copies, specialized in different artistic and technical areas, dance magazines and catalogs, and videos of national and international dance.

Access to the Forum Dança Documentation Center is possible upon payment of an annual subscription.

Forum Dança - Documentation Center

Documentation Center

Select each of the sections below to learn about all of the Documentation Center specifications.

Detailed information

The Documentation Center is dedicated to the field of dance and the disciplines that intersect with it. It comprises a Library and a Media Library, and is accessible to those who frequent our activities, as well as to the external public, from Monday to Friday, for local consultation or home request.

The Library has about 1300 volumes referring to different themes (e.g., Anatomy, Visual Arts, Essay/Theory, Composition, Performance Studies, Philosophy and Aesthetics, Educational Dance, European Dance, Modernism, Cultural Policies, Postmodernism, Production, Theater), magazines and catalogs of the performing arts since the 1990s. The Video Library area is made up of around 1000 DVDs, mostly recordings of national and international dance works.

António Pinto Ribeiro’s personal dance collection is deposited at the Documentation Centre, available for local consultation. Rui Silveira’s collection of books, also deposited here, is also available for local consultation.

The Library is continuously updated through: offerings from artists and professors; regular purchases of new publications; offer of a copy of the new published books Orfeu Negro and the Orfeu Mini collection, the result of Forum Dança’s collaboration with this publishing house.

The Mediatheque is a collection, unique in Portugal, of registering national choreographic creation over the last 30 years. There are records of works by most national contemporary dance choreographers. Its facilities have suitable equipment for reading any support and technological format (VHS, DVD, CD-ROM).

The Documentation Center is a fundamental resource and support for artistic research (resulting from artistic residencies or in-depth creative processes) and academic research, especially in the preparation of literature reviews, the search for theoretical frameworks, or data research in archives. . It is a resource for the development of works and projects (intermediate and final) by Forum Dança artists and students. It is an important reference in supporting the academic research of external users, namely undergraduate, masters and doctoral students in the artistic field, who are looking for very specific information in these disciplines.

Dance teachers, in different contexts of the community, also visit it to prepare and design classes, namely through books on Educational Dance, Composition and Anatomy. The Portuguese dance DVD section is also used as a source to accompany or structure the sessions.

Its openness to the general public – students from regular studio classes, foreign artists who are passing through and looking for information, occasional visitors to thematic seminars, children/young people from summer vacation programs – gives it the function of dissemination/presentation choreographic production.

Opening hours

From Monday to Friday, from 12:00 to 18:00.

User rules

External users

1. To access the Forum Dança Documentation Center it is necessary to acquire a User Card.

This will be valid for one year and its cost is:

- 6 € – external users
- 4 € – former students of the training courses and the studio
- 2,50 € – students enrolled in the Studio
- Free – students of Forum Dança training courses

2. Only material that has the respective registration number on the spine (book) or cover (DVD) and that is not marked with ● may be requested. The rest of the material must be consulted/viewed at Forum Dança.

3. The Requisition and Return of each volume must be registered in the Requisition Form. This will have to be signed by the applicant and a member of Forum Dança.

4. 3 volumes can be requested in each request, for a maximum period of 1 week.

5. The requisition period may be extended, in case of availability of the material. In that case, a Renewal of Requisition will be made, which will have to be registered on the Requisition Form and signed by a member of Forum Dança.

6. The disappearance of volumes or their deterioration will imply their replacement or, in the case of editions no longer available, payment of the amount equivalent to their value.

7. Delivery of material after the stipulated deadline will result in a fine of 0,50 € for each day of delay.

Books

Available books at the Documentation Center

[listings in Portuguese]

DVD's

Available DVDsin the Documentation Center

[listings in Portuguese]

Acknowledgements

General Directorate of the Arts, for donating various publications supported under its programs (from IPAE, IA and IAC) to the Documentation Centre.
Publisher Livros Horizonte, who donated various books for children and young people to the Documentation Centre.
António Pinto Ribeiro and Rui Silveira, for depositing their dance collections in the Documentation Centre.
Inês Bernardo, Madalena Victorino, and Sara Anjo, for donations to the Documentation Centre.
D. Maria II National Theatre, for the donation of its edited or co-edited publications.
The Serralves Foundation Library for the donation of publications edited under the scope of its actions and for other co-edited publications.
Publisher ORFEU NEGRO, for the offer of a copy of all its new editions, from the collections Orfeu Negro and Orfeu Mini.