S o f i a   N e u p a r t h

P R A C T I C E S   O F

A   B E C O M I N G   B O D Y

Every life form exercises life! Shape could be considered as a document of movement. Clearly, the jellyfish relates to movement waves differently from the coconut tree, the giraffe, the slug, the stone, the cat or the grasshopper... it is clear that every shape, every form of life, tells us a different story about the meeting Body-World. How can we accompany the becoming gesture, the becoming voice, the becoming dance? How can we listen to movement weaving the Body? Where do we block the passage of movement? How do we resonate with space, with other bodies, with the tension between bodies? What forces to create a vertical alignment? What is a specific movement wave, what could be a chord of movements, a symphony? Where does attention travel? If dance is a form of knowledge, how does it vibrate with philosophy or with embryology? We will work everyday through body practices for one and a half hour, take some time to talk-write, and open into experimenting in space. We will tune to what i call "see-estar-fazer" (being-being "present"-doing), we will take our time to be in the moment, to meet... the simple complexity of existing, the poetry of life...

SOFIA NEUPARTH has a unique path within the Contemporary Dance in Portugal. Always integrating collaborative projects, in the late 80s she created a space for trans(un)disciplinary artistic research based on the studies of Body and Movement - Centro em Movimento (c.e.m) in Lisbon. It is the understanding of Body as a complex relational entity that determines all her work and this work is shaped out of the continuous meeting with the other researchers at c.e.m

Weather within the professional structure she directs, the classes she teaches, the creative processes she accompanies, the urban festival she programs, the research she carries on day by day, the political intervention she performs, the listening to people and places she exercises, the pieces she presents, the work is always carried out in uncharted territories, outside the mainstream, permanently questioning the continued ability to resist and reinvent Live and Art.