Investigating Dances – Interrogating the World
IN2PAST Dança e Política
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Date
- / Cancelled / Sold out
Location
Lower Gallery Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Promoted by Laboratório Associado IN2PAST, in articulation with the dance not dance team, this meeting gathers researchers whose work, carried out from different disciplinary fields such as Contemporary History, Cultural Studies, Art History or Anthropology, has dealt with dance.
An Associated Laboratory of reference for the study of cultural heritage in its material and immaterial dimensions, IN2PAST is a consortium of seven research units (CESEM, CHAIA, CRIA, HERCULES, IHA, IHC and LAB2PT) based at NOVA FCSH, the University of Évora, the University of Minho, ISCTE and the University of Coimbra.
By investigating the pasts of territories and populations, as well as the present ways of using those pasts, IN2PAST aims to be a fundamental instrument for research and innovation in terms of both identifying and safeguarding cultural heritage and promoting an inclusive civic memory.
Image: Visita Guiada, by Cláudia Dias, interpreted by Maya Albuquerque. Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 15 November 2023. © Maria Abranches
Speakers
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Francisco Mendes
Assistant professor at the History Department of the University of Minho and researcher at Lab2PT and In2Past. He is a member of the projects Cultur-Monts – Valorização das Paisagens Culturais de montanha: um recurso para o desenvolvimento territorial sustentável (Interreg Sudoe 2021-2027) and AgitProp – As imagens e as coisas: agitação e propaganda em tempos de guerra fria e revolução africana – Portugal e os PALOP (1961-1991). He took part in the Curricular Reform of Basic Education in Guinea-Bissau (RECEB) programme, coordinated by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Ministry of National Education of Guinea-Bissau and in partnership with UNICEF and the University of Minho.
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Maria João Castro
With a PhD in Contemporary Art History from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Maria João Castro is a researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the same university. Among several works published in the field of dance are Os Ballets Russes em Lisboa (2017) and Dança e Poder no século XX (2024). She was awarded the Portuguese Academy of History Prize (2023) and the António Quadros Prize (2024).
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Maria José Fazenda
Coordinating professor at the Escola Superior de Dança – Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa and a researcher at CRIA – Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia. She has a PhD in Anthropology from ISCTE and studied dance at the National Conservatory Dance School. She organised the book Movimentos Presentes: Aspectos da Dança independente em Portugal (Cotovia e Danças na Cidade, 1997) and is the author of Dança Teatral: Ideias, Experiências, Ações – 2ª edição revista e atualizada (Colibri, 2012 [Celta, 2007]) and Da Vida da Obra Coreográfica (Imprensa Nacional, 2018), among other publications.
Programme
Dance and Power
Maria João Castro's research focuses on the relationship between Art and Power, specifically Dance, Travel and Post-Colonial studies. In the field of dance, her sphere of reflection focuses on the 20th century and the international panorama of the political manipulation of dance, particularly by totalitarian regimes. Whether as a vehicle for propaganda or as a form of protest against established dictatorships, Terpsícore's art has played an important role over the last century in determining how art is used as an instrument of established power.
Theatrical Dance in Portugal
In Portugal, professional theatrical dance gained expression very late compared to other countries on the Euro-American axis. In fact, it was only after the Revolution of 25 April 1974, following the democratisation of the country and its social, cultural and economic development, that dance saw a significant expansion. Theatrical dance in Portugal will then share several aspects with the forms and movements that this expressive culture takes on in other latitudes, but the cultural representations that shape the universes of each artist, the interactions that people establish between themselves and the political and institutional circumstances in which their activity takes place will determine its difference and its specificity.
We have argued that the articulation of these three domains – representations, interactions, circumstances –, as formulated by social scientist Steven Vertovec, constitutes a relevant model of analysis for understanding the uniqueness of theatrical dance practices in Portugal and the diversity of its manifestations in the country's context. Theatrical dance is dance that is specifically put on for an audience, regardless of its genre.
By traversing lines and diagrams on the Timeline to Be, we set out to summon up choreographies that mark the historical trajectory of dance in Portugal, observing how these three factors influence the knowledge about the world that they produce, and communicate, on a social, cultural and political level.
Dancing the Nations – The History of the National Ballet of Guinea-Bissau (1975-2025)
Created on 28 November 1975, the National Ballet of Guinea-Bissau was a revolutionary movement to nationalise Guinean culture after independence. In this context, it has parallels in other African countries that became independent in the 1950s and 1960s. The national ballets, born out of the liberation struggles and the affirmation of African independence, have redrawn the lost and repressed histories of centuries of existence, functioning as a true writing of the nation.
The choreographic experience of the national ballets also represented an attempt to blend various ethnic traditions, multiplying their effects beyond the communities of origin, promoting and marking an interethnic national and transnational memory.
With its roots in the cultural policy practiced in the areas liberated by the PAIGC from the mid-1960s onwards, its activity has enabled the reconstruction of a collective identity that is widely recognised both inside and outside the country. The National Ballet's trajectory has accompanied the country's complex political evolution, synthesising its various phases and reflecting the hopes and difficulties of a people in search of their identity. Its repertoire reflects this.
Still active today, with ups and downs in the actual working conditions, the National Ballet has trained several generations of dancers, promoting the projection of the traditional culture of ethnic dances in successive choreographies that update the collective energy of dance for a nation.
Due to political and military instability in recent decades, the written records, photographic materials and films made of the performances have disappeared, destroyed by successive conflicts. The National Ballet's journey of almost half a century has almost disappeared from the nation's material memory. The choreographies and closets remained residual in the repetition of the shows, in an increasingly fragile process of history's survival.
Peoples so often considered “without history” by the colonial powers had the opportunity to rewrite their millennia-old history on these dance stages. That's why the destruction or disappearance of the material remains of these choreographies and the life stories of their protagonists is, once again, a dememorialisation of history, of its often unforeseen connections, linked over generations.
Recovering these links, in this project, will help to realise a potential history, a history projected into the future, where history, by recovering lost memory, can be constituted as a next history. In this next history, dance, in its many dimensions, from everyday life to the politics of the nation, is a horizon full of hope, a breach in the often oppressive and unequal time of the world.
Co-production
The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation reserves the right to collect and keep records of images, sounds and voice for the diffusion and preservation of the memory of its cultural and artistic activity. For further information, please contact us through the Information Request form.