PORTUGUESE PLATFORM FOR PERFORMING ARTS: PT. 23
The 8th edition of the Portuguese Platform for Performing Arts already has an official date and will take place from June 6th to 10th, 2023, in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal. In these five days, programmers, curators, artistic directors and those responsible for festivals and/or theaters will have the opportunity to see some of the most interesting works, created in the last two years in Portugal, in the areas of dance, theater and performance, selected by a highly skilled jury.
MEET THE FIRST 5 SELECTED PROJECTS FOR PT. 23!

André e. Teodósio
with INFO MANIAC

Diana Niepce
with The Other Side of Dance
Diana Niepce is one of the most remarkable artists on the Portuguese contemporary dance scene. She is a choreographer, dancer, researcher and writer, known for her defiant, sensitive, groundbreaking and extremely rigorous work, where she radically expands the limits of the body, of movement and of dance itself. After Anda, Diana (2020), her previous piece in which she portrays her recovery process as a dancer after an accident that made her tetraplegic, she now presents us The Other Side of Dance, a bold, violent and sophisticated choreography that uses the apparent fragilities of the body as an element of power and overcoming, giving visibility and strength to historically marginalized discourses.

Gaya de Medeiros
with BAqUE — Contorno do Gosto

Marco da Silva Ferreira
with C A R C A S S
Marco da Siva Ferreira, a brilliant choreographer with an exciting and innovative movement language and a key figure in the new generation of Portuguese contemporary dance, will present his most recent work, C A R C A S S, a strong piece for a group of 10 exciting performers and 2 live musicians, using dance as a tool to research community, the construction of collective identity, memory and cultural crystallization. They depart from familiar footwork, from clubbing, balls, battles, ciphers, and the studio, to approach standardized and immutable folk dances that they have inherited and revisited. How does one decide to forget and become a memory? What is the role of individual identities in building a community? What is their driving force?

Tânia Carvalho
with Versa-Vice
Tânia Carvalho, a reference in Portuguese contemporary dance, has a distinctive movement language and a unique sense of depth translated into works that defy classification and excel in composition. Our platform will present her new creation, Versa-Vice, that will premiere in Paris at Bienal du Val du Marne, in March. About it, Tânia writes: “I don’t have concrete ideas about my work. In these times when people tend to explain things rationally, it’s hard for me to find a way to defend my work and write about it. I try not to use my mind any more than I use my other senses. The mind is only a small part of the game. I try to open my heart to the unknown in me. This way I get closer to everything that exists, and I think this way I get closer to my purpose of being an artist in this life”.
For this new work with 9 dancers, Tânia, also a brilliant musician, will compose and perform live.
MORE INFORMATIONS FOR PROGRAMMERS, CURATORS AND DIRECTORS
GET TO KNOW OUR JURY
ANA ROCHA
Ana Rocha (Porto, 1982) was a producer for visual arts and performing arts. She is a curator, choreographer, performer and dramaturge. She has been working in the cultural and artistic field as an independent freelancer for 21 years. She works as cultural mediation and programming (TAMANHO M, XXATENEUXXI’19, Cultura em Expansão (2019 to 2022), To School Out of School’19 \ Colectivos Pláka, TanzKongress’19, ViaAberta\Mid Summers Night Dream’19, CURADURA’21, Set-Up’21, A Casa de Sibila’22, among others), collaborating with informal organizations for the arts, artists-run collectives and public institutions. Ana collaborates as a freelance consultant for performing arts in different contexts & disciplines, artists and structures as Sekoia and Bela Associação, and Braga’27 ECC, among others.
CLÁUDIA GALHÓS
Cláudia Galhós (Lisbon, 1972) writes about culture, performing arts and dance for newspapers since 1994, in publications such as BLITZ, O Independente, Público, Jornal de Letras, Mouvement, Visão, among others. She has been writing about performing arts for Expresso since 2005. For television, she was editor of the weekly cultural magazine about culture “AGORA” and Palcos Agora (RTP2 (2012 to 2015)) and editor of the weekly supplement «Artes de Palco», of the program «Magazine » (RTP2, 2004 to 2006). She was the editor and author of the book “There is nothing that is beyond your imagination” (2015, within the framework of the European network “Imagine 2020 – Art and Climate Change”, which brings together 10 European theaters, led by Kaaitheater, in Brussels).
CRISTINA PLANAS LEITÃO
BA in Contemporary Dance from ArtEZ (BA), Arnhem (NL), 2006. In July 2022, she takes over the Interim Artistic Direction of the Performing Arts Department of ÁGORA, Porto (Teatro Municipal do Porto, DDD – Festival Dias da Dança, CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva) and in February 2023, will assume the co-Artistic Direction, together with Drew Klein. As a performing arts programmer, she highlights her collaboration with DAP, under the Artistic Direction of Tiago Guedes, and where she is part of the programming team for the regular seasons of TMP (from 2019), Festival DDD since the 2020 edition and CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva developing his artistic project and mission since its opening in 2021. Her aggregating curatorial practice is focused on the development of sustainable creation formats, new narratives and care relationships within the performing arts.
FRANCISCO FRAZÃO
MARIA JOÃO GUARDÃO
NÁDIA YRACEMA
ODETE
PATRÍCIA PORTELA
Patrícia Portela is a writer and performance maker born in 1974, living between Belgium and Portugal. She studied set and costume design in Lisbon and in Utrecht where she made her master of arts, she has studied film in Ebeltoft at the European Film College, Denmark, and has a master in Philosophy from the International Institute of Leuven, Belgium. She is a founder member of the Prado cultural association since 2003 and a curator at the collective editions Prado since 2008. Patrícia Portela writes chronicles for Jornal de Letras, Jornal do Centro and Coffeepaste. She was the Artistic Director of Teatro Viriato from March 2020 to February 2022.
PEDRO BARREIRO
PEDRO PENIM
Born in Lisbon in 1975, Pedro Penim is a director, actor and dramaturgist. With a degree in Theater from the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema and a Master’s in Cultural Management from ISCTE, in 1995 he founded the Teatro Praga collective, an emblematic company of contemporary Portuguese theatrical creation. He is also the founder of the cultural space Rua das Gaivotas6, in Lisbon, a project that welcomes creations by new artists. Pedro Penim’s work – which extends to programming, translation, teaching and lecture activity – has already been presented in several festivals throughout the Portuguese territory, as well as in several countries in Europe, South America, Asia and the Middle East.
RUI HORTA
Rui Horta started dancing at the age of 17 at Ballet Gulbenkian. He studied, taught and performed in New York for several years. In 1990, he founded the S.O.A.P Dance Theater Frankfurt, where he created, over 7 years, six programs which toured all over the world. From 1998 to 2000 he worked in Munich, at the Muffathalle, where he created “Bones & Oceans”, “Zeitraum” and “Blindspot”. In August 2000, he returned to Portugal (Montemor-o-Novo), where he founded the multidisciplinary center for research and creation O Espaço do Tempo.
RUI TORRINHA
Rui Torrinha is currently the Artistic Director of Centro Cultural Vila Flor (CCVF) and Performing Arts programming. He directs international annual festivals like GUIdance, Westway LAB and Gil Vicente covering different art fields such as contemporary dance, music and theatre. He also runs the support plan for the performing arts creation process connected to CCVF and Centro de Criação de Cardoso (CCC) in the form of coproductions and artistic residencies. He has been the main coordinator, on behalf of A Oficina, of several EU projects (ex: INES, ETEP, AEROWAVES) and national networks. In 2012, Torrinha was chosen as one of the members for artistic programming team of Guimarães 2012, European Capital of Culture.
TÂNIA GUERREIRO
Tânia Guerreiro has worked in various areas of show production, cinema, visual arts and festivals, such as Festival Atlântico, Temps d’Images, Alkantara, Casa d’Os Dias da Água, O Som e A Fúria, ZDB, Jangada de Pedra, where she worked in production, management, fundraising, development of European projects and communication. She created the Self-Mistake project in 2019, which promotes artistic creation, in a context of experimentation and risk, in the areas of dance and contemporary performance. Under the Self-Mistake program, she supports several emerging artists with scholarships, monitoring and support for their work.