Events

A seminar co-organized by UFBA and FMH–University of Lisbon, featuring students and invited senior researchers from Brazil and Portugal (Carla Fernandes, Ivani Santana, and Flavia Pinheiro), sharing practices and discoveries from the DAST Project – Dancing Simply Together: Exploring the connections and flow between dance and complexity 2023–2025, with funding and support from CNPq and FCT.

An encounter between students from the Graduate Program in Performing Arts at UFBA (PPGAC/UFBA) and PhD candidates in Dance at FMH, University of Lisbon.

A cartography of affections, gestures, words, and dances among researchers and artists from Brazil and Portugal.

Organized by:
Adriana Gehres (UPE)
Fátima Wachowicz (UFBA)
Maria João Alves and PhD students from FMH (ULisboa)

Funding acknowledgment
The project DAST – Dancing Simply Together: Exploring the connections and flow between dance and complexity (2023–2025) is funded by CNPq (grant 420222/2022-7) and supported by FCT, through the INET-md Multiannual Funding Program 2020–2023 (UIDB/00472/2020) and the PhD fellowship 2021.07216.BD.

Additional information: https://projetodast.wixsite.com/dancing-simply-toget

Carla Fernandes | Principal Investigator and invited Professor at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, FCSH, where she is Head of the ‘BlackBox – Arts&Cognition Lab’, funded by the European Research Council, since 2014. She directs the Performance & Cognition group at ICNOVA since 2021. Her research focus is in the intersection of multimodal communication, social cognition, new media and the performing arts, from cognitive and ethnographic perspectives. She has been designing and leading interdisciplinary research projects for over 12 years in the areas of cognitive linguistics, creativity, multimodal communication, non-verbal behaviour, video annotation, and the creation of digital platforms to document intangible cultural heritage, such as contemporary dance and performance. She leads the ‘TKB project’ (A Transmedia Knowledge-Base for performing arts) since 2010, funded by FCT Portugal. Previously, she has worked as Associate Professor at IPLeiria (ESTM) from 2000 to 2007.

Ivani Santana | Artist and researcher dedicated to the field of dance and technological mediation through theoretical and practice-based investigation. Her conceptual framework is grounded in three main pillars: Dance Improvisation, Enactivist Theory, and Digital Culture. She holds a CNPq PQ-1C Research Productivity Fellowship and is Full Professor in the Department of Body Art (EEFD) at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), where she coordinates the Graduate Program in Dance. She is also a collaborator in the Graduate Program in Performing Arts at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). She holds a Master’s degree (2000) and a PhD (2003) in Communication and Semiotics from PUC-SP. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Sonic Arts Research Centre (UK, 2012–13), where she conducted research on the Dramaturgy of the (Tele)Sonic Body. In 2018–2019, she was awarded a CAPES Visiting Professor Fellowship at Simon Fraser University (Canada), developing interdisciplinary research in collaboration with Dr. Evan Thompson, Dr. Rebecca Todd (University of British Columbia), and Alva Noë (UC Berkeley, USA). Santana is a pioneer in Brazil in the field of telematic dance research via advanced academic telecommunication networks (ICTs). She is the founder and member of Mulheres da Improvisação, a collective that published the book Livro de Dançar: Cartas para Improvisar e Compor (2022). She is also the founder of LATINA(S)CÊNICAS, the Latin American Network on Technologies and Intermedialities in the Performing Arts. She leads the research group Poéticas Tecnológicas: corpoaudiovisual, which develops various projects supported by FAPESB, CAPES, CNPq and other cultural programs such as Iberescena, VivoLab, Cultura Digital, and Fundo de Cultura. Santana is the author of the books Corpo Aberto: Cunningham, dança e novas tecnologias (SP: FAPESP/EDUC, 2002) and Dança na Cultura Digital (BA: FAPESB/EDUFBA, 2006), and editor of Estados da Dança: entrevistas, relatos e ensaios de criadores contemporâneos (Salvador: GIPE-CIT/PPGAC/UFBA, 2006). She has published several articles in national and international journals, including International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, Liminalities, Culture and Globalization, and contributed to a special issue of the Belgian journal Nouvelles de Danse on body arts and cognition. As an active dance artist, she has conceived performances, installations, video dance works, and telematic dance projects. She received the UNESCO Prize for the Promotion of the Arts – New Technologies at the Monaco Dance Forum and participated in an artistic residency at the renowned Centre Chorégraphique National Pavillon Noir, in Aix-en-Provence, France. She regularly presents at key conferences and meetings, such as Body Knowledge, The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour, Sonorities, Transmidialab, and DHDR. In 2014, she was invited by the Castro Alves Theatre Ballet to develop the project Gretas do Tempo. Since 2019, she has been working on artificial reality projects. In 2024, she was awarded a Funarte/Alliance Française Artistic Residency Grant (CRUZAMENTOS), through which she spent one month developing a new artistic project at Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse, Paris, France.

Flavia Pinheiro | Brazilian choreographer, educator, and researcher based in Amsterdam. Her work investigates networks of resilience and resistance to dominant knowledge systems through fabulatory speculations in interspecies choreography. In her artistic practice, she seeks to continuously create conditions for breath and vitality — an unstoppable dance that fosters improbable exchanges with nonhuman entities such as bacteria, plants, birds, antelopes, and ghosts. Navigating across multiple media — photography, video, performance, urban interventions, installation, sound, and writing — she foregrounds how diversity and transversality can contribute to the (un)learning of colonial pedagogies. She holds a Master’s degree in DAS Choreography (2022) and participated in the DAS Third research programme (2022–2024) at the Amsterdam University of the Arts (AHK). Her graduation piece, 7 Abiku Solos for 11 Bacteria Falling Through, was supported by the Aart Janszen Fund and received the André Veltkamp Beurs scholarship. In 2022, she also received the 3Package Deal fund for international talents from the AFK, within the “Engaged Art” coalition. Her work The Unborn was supported by the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK) and the Pernambuco State Cultural Fund (Funcultura) and was part of the Holland Festival programme. In 2020, she co-founded SOUTH BOOM BOOM, a platform for performative conferences and publications aimed at non-European students. Since 2021, she has co-directed the Somatic Laboratory alongside Paula Montecinos and Papaya Kuir — a continuous research space focused on touch-based somatic practices with queer communities and asylum seekers. She is currently a PhD candidate at Leiden University, within the PhDArts programme. Her current research project, Mimosa, is supported by the Veem House for Performance, the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK), and the Mondriaan Fund.

O Projeto DAST - Dancing Simply Together: Explorando as conexões e os fluxos entre dança e complexidade [2023-2025], com financiamento do CNPq 420222/2022-7 e apoios da FCT no âmbito do Financiamento Plurianual do INET-md 2020-2023 UIDB/00472/2020 e da bolsa de doutoramento 2021.07216.BD