The Itinerant Choreographic Laboratory is a project designed to provide the local community an opportunity to experience direct contact with the process of artistic creation of a contemporary dance piece.

The participants, chosen from among users of for example cultural and social solidarity associations - support for children, young people, family, social and community integration and protection in old age –associations representing patients or disabled people, immigrant associations, etc., will be invited to become active elements in the construction of an original professional show, which will be inspired by their reality, sharing the stage with a group of professional artists, who are temporarily integrated into their community and who guide the choreographic laboratories.

This work builds upon and continues that already developed by Companhia de Dança de Almada – the entity promoting the project - within the scope of social inclusion, with a group of people of African descent in the municipality of Almada, namely through dance education, encouraging participants to perform movement, based on their own experiences.

The project's itinerancy is based on the perspective of continuity, implementing this work with associations from all over the country, in order to reach the maximum number of stakeholders and audiences, and above all by the advantage of sustaining knowledge, creativity and innovation amongst the participants, and encouraging mobility and productive exchanges between cultures and local and national cultural identities.

Starting from a previous meeting between Companhia de Dança de Almada and the participating association or community, in which not only responsibilities, schedules and logistical issues are established, essential points of the culture and identity of the community are also established so that, later, they can be worked upon and inserted in the final product, promoting a singular result, rooted and inseparable from the co-creator group.

Bearing in mind the possibility of the lack of physical practice by members of the community, we will try, during the laboratory, to create a choreography based on daily physical movements, exploring and combining gestures with the personal contributions of the participants and establishing choreographic relationships, both physical and verbal between the performers and the musical / scenic elements. There is no requirement of the need for technical knowledge of dance, and therefore it proposes interpretive exploration and the presence on stage of people who probably have never had this opportunity in the context of contemporary dance. Thus, it becomes special, exactly because of the way the body reacts to novelty, allowing for experimentation and appropriation of the performative space, creating new perspectives in face of what is the show and, basically, the performing arts.

From a choreographic score constructed in co-creation by the artistic team of the Company, which isn’t definitive but a guideline for the work that will later be developed in the laboratories, choreographic snapshots will be created with the community that include not only movement, but also its culture: music, stories, traditions, etc; and that, combined into this general choreographic base, will each time create an original show which because of its impermanence will be completely different depending on the institutions and areas of the country, thus always having the characteristics of a debut piece.

Therefore we propose a project with three essential dimensions - the artistic, which is based upon the integration and experimentation of a full artistic project and, in every way, personal and interpersonal; the social, expressed in the search for social integration and affective exploration of the actors; and educational, manifested in the acquisition of technical knowledge in relation to the production of performing arts and, more specifically, contemporary dance.

The project has the following objectives:

• Encourage discussion of the current issues of social, ethnic, sexual or racial discrimination and encourage the search for commendable solutions to social inclusion, equality and dignity, through an artistic project;
• Promote the transmission of cultural and social values of the communities involved;
• Involve participants in the act of creating / performing a cultural artistic product in a professional context, enhancing behaviors and fostering skills inherent to work in this specificity;
• Promote individuality as an essential echo in global creation, contributing to human formation and critical positioning of the stakeholders;
• Enhance the role of the body and the contemporary movement as a means of artistic expression;
• Foster individual creativity and expression in the construction of the movement;
• Promote contemporary dance by creating dynamics as a process of forming audiences.

Dentro do Abraço (Within an Embrace) | Itinerant Choreographic Laboratory - I edition

In terms of the thematic context, we opted for the transversality of affective memories – From where do I come and who am I? Who am I in relation to others? How does an embrace work as therapy?

The embrace as a cure will be the basis of the stimuli of the movement, for the interesting way that a simple daily movement can have such a significant number of readings and be used as a metaphor for transversal problems, not only for these communities but for each and every human being.

SCENA | Itinerant Choreographic Laboratory - II edition

This will be a work where the real memories of the dancers and the participants of the community, here also performers, around the theater as a physical space, practice and concept. In “SCENA”, the stage is no longer just a space where reality is suspended and assumes the role of a memory box, in a celebration of the farce and the artifice.

Contact production at Companhia de Dança de Almada for more information:
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