Dancer, choreographer, researcher, teacher, for over 30 years. Trained by Margarida de Abreu, working with several national and international teachers – highlights stays in France, Italy, Holland, Spain, Germany -. Graduated from the National Conservatory Dance School, Bachelor's and Master's degree from ESD, where she structured and validated the Amalgama Movement Methodology. She has worked as a choreographer and dancer in contemporary art, cinema, opera and television. She is co-founder and director of Amalgama Cia de Dança and responsible for all its national and international projects and partnerships in the areas of Artistic Creation and Training and Community and Personal Development. She was honored as one of the significant Dance careers in Portugal (2009). She was invited by the Cultural Institute of Macau as artistic director of several local projects with several participations in Festivals in Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Miami (2011-19). Creator of the UNITYGATE Platform – East-West Cultural Bridges and Exchanges. Invited to the Laois Dance Platform Festival, Ireland, and to be its representative in Portugal (2018-21). Created and structured the DanceFulness Amalgama methodology and started the first training sessions (2018). Co-creator of Terra da Fonte – Art Center in rural areas (2020-25) Mafra. She was a visiting professor at the University of Saint Joseph in Macau (2017-23).
This article is a testimony and reflection on the practice of Dance Ecology, developed over a 24-year artistic journey immersed in Nature. It emerges from research, investigation, and the pursuit of an eco-human dance methodology, one that resonates more organically and viscerally, refining the senses and embracing a state of surrender toward the wisdom of simplicity. A path that deepens the exploration of a body-nature, integrating deep ecology, understanding belonging, and reclaiming unity in an art that fully embodies the body — a whole being. Within the context of a national and independent dance company, as a director, choreographer, and dancer, I share my professional experience with Dance Ecology practices, both in a professional company setting and in national and international territories. This approach interweaves practices and methodologies, awareness, body, and creation, responding to the emerging and urgent paradigms of this new century. We must draw closer to natural, genuine, and intuitive practices, stripped of imposed concepts and formats, yet born from places within the body—organic, visceral, sensory, and vibrational—reclaiming the body’s multidimensional intelligence. These are places of connection, continuously developing professional methodologies that integrate the components of movement (actions), sensation, feeling, and thought. All of this unfolds under guiding principles that must preserve the spontaneity and organicity of human nature and the environments in which they are embedded and belong. In the search for an artistic expression that is authentic and whole, one that operates with kinesthetic and synesthetic, proprioceptive, and interoceptive awareness, attuning to presence, perception, and connection, this is ultimately about reclaiming eco-human unity in both its macro and micro dimensions—a space where science, ecology, art, nature, humanity, and spirituality intersect. Aware of the breadth of this recent, emerging, and vital field in Dance, as well as the multiple perspectives that are already being identified.
References
Aposhyan, S. (1999). Natural intelligence: Body-mind integration and human development. Williams & Wilkins.
Boff, L. (2012). Cuidado necessário: Na vida, na saúde, na educação, na ecologia, na ética e na espiritualidade. Vozes.
