ABOUT

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​​Quando alguma coisa é alguma coisa,
deixa logo de ser as outras todas, e isso é uma pena.
O que é preciso é ser tudo ao mesmo tempo.
(Agostinho da Silva)

​THE PATH OF SOUND, THE VOICE OF GESTURE

​After the study of formal communication, through specializing in foreign languages and literatures, I began focusing on the expression of gesture as a broader means of communication and connection with myself and others. That became the thread of my artistic career, started in 1991 with Flamenco and Spanish Classical Ballet at the Célia Neves School (Lisbon).

Not long after I started studying dance in Portugal, Spain and Italy, I began questioning the conventional academic dance teaching methods' style, which in my view did not that much to promote a welcoming and healthy atmosphere in class. Getting into contact with contemporary dance and meeting the methodology of Yumma Mudra, founder of the Danza Duende International School, not long after, made more sense of a growing need to deconstruct and research deeper into the fundamentals of the artistic expression.

In this context I started exploring movement improvisation and choreographic, rhythmic and musical composition, as well as the relationship between sound and vibration with the body with several teachers at the Centro em Movimento and Fórum Dança, in Lisbon, some of which were Sofia Neuparth, Peter-Michael Dietz, Amélia Bentes, Jessica Henou, Céu Dória, Howard Sonenklar, Margarida Mestre, Zé Carvalho and Carlos Zíngaro.  Among the new practices I got in touch with in these classes were Feldenkrais, Hands-on and Body-Mind-Centering, later beautifully complemented in other contexts wih the study of Tai Chi (masters Xuan Wu and Mohamed Youssouf) and Kung-Fu (masters Guilherme Luz and Mohamed Youssouf), Theater Nô (Masato Matsuura) and Butô (with the late Kō Murobushi). Attending performer Félix Lozano's Movement for Theatre classes also helped me undesrtand a great deal about working with intention, instinct and energy in performing situations.

The early 2000's were a very rich period in Portugal, culturally speaking, a time where many non-European dances arrived in the country. In this context, I had the opportunity to study intensively Middle-Eastern dance and percussion, particularly the darbuka, to which I deeply devoted myself to for years. I had done early studies of piano, guitar and singing as a child and a young adult, but rhythm and percussion were a pending old love. I studied Middle-Eastern dance for some years, as well, with artists such as Prisca Diedrich, Shokry Mohamed, Nur Bau, Tânia Luíz, Eva Chacón, Fadua Chuffi and Annie Nganou, in Portugal and Spain. 

However, I was now feeling the need to go deeper in the understanding of my body, my breath and my mind and was led to Integral Yoga with Beatriz Katchi, creator of this form of Yoga in Portugal, who introduced me to the Buddhist meditation practice, through Tsering Paldron.

This was also the period when I met Franco-Hungarian dancer and choreographer Yumma Mudra,
an encounter wich was decisive in my experience and understanding of art. Yumma brought the skill, the knowledge and the technique of the Russian Ballets, along with the authentic non-apologetic expression of the Romani dances to performing. By that time she was creating the foundations of the Danza Duende and the Danza Duende International Network, a training which I followed since its very beginnings. Yumma Mudra was  inspired by the tradition of the wisdom dakinis, according to the Tibetan cosmovision, gathering in her art important keys and tools to work on the understanding and transforming of one's emotions. The work on one's perceptions based on an awareness of space practice and the integration of opposites have also always been an important element in her work.  Author of "La Voie Qui Danse" (The Path that Dances) and of the recent The Island of Bee or the Gap into Senses, Intuitve Dharma Studies' teacher Yumma also introduced me to the Dharma, a path in which have also been extremely important to me Tsering Paldron and Ringu Tulku Rinpoche.

Bringing a more sacred meaning to dance and art seemed to be the missing key
I had been longing for since a long time.

A certified instructor in Danza Duende, I started teaching Gipsy Duende in 2003, following an invitation by Yumma Mudra, in Portugal and other countries of Europe,  and in 2015 I started facilitating one week retreats in nature with my colleague Carolina Fonseca. 
 In the context of my studies of Gypsy Duende, I specialized in dance, music and rhythms of the Romani culture of several European countries (read more about my journey with Flamenco and Romani Dances here). 

In 2017 the Danza Duende School was reformed, on the occasion of the invitation of artist Michel Raji as guest teacher. M. Raji brought Sensorium, a unique approach to breath work, based on his cultural bereber sufi heritage and bio-cartograhpy. Together, Yumma Mudra and Michel Raji founded the University of Choreosophy, a three-year training platform, bringing together the tools of Danza Duende and those of Michel Raji's Choreosophy, which I completed in 2021. 

​Apart from my dance career as a performer, teacher and choreographer, I have also been working as a translator and conference interpreter for thirty years now, having recently translated the first three chapters of Luc Bigé's "La Symbologie du Corps Humain" into Portuguese.  As an interpreter, I have worked in the most varied contexts, conferences, forums and world summits, but I wish to highlight my collaboration in the 6th Transnational Meeting of Horizon Programmes on Romani People and Nomads (Porto, 1994), in the I European Forum of Romani Women (Seville, 2007) and in the Conference: Romani Art in Europe - Romani Culture and Art in Portugal and Europe (Idanha-a-Nova, 2010).​

Born to a Spanish mother and a Portuguese father, who in turn was born in Mozambique to a Portuguese mother and a father of Luso-Goan heritage, I have always felt as a daughter of the world and struggled with the pressure to define my  career, my choices, my passions and that which is called "identity". Along the years, it became increasingly difficult for me to set up to defined styles, expressions and crystallized statements deep in my soul. As the years went by, solidifed definitions seemed to lose more and more meaning and what was essential was becoming ever more essential...

However or therefore...
I consider myself as an eternal apprentice and the passion to continue learning from others
keeps on bringing me back to my own path and ignites my life.  I have recently started to reasearch into Somatic Movement with Teresa Prima, I have gone back to the study of contemporary dance with Aldara Bizarro and have started to study Persian dance with Kathoon Fallah, a journey which is being nothing less than magical. Somehow, I feel I keep coming back to the beginning over and over, but in a ever more wonderful, joyful and grounded way.

I believe we were born to appreciate life and contemplate the cosmos, and dance is one of the human expressions that can most bring joy to a being, by transmuting emotions, by celebrating the simplest and simultaneously deepest aspects of life, the reflection of the eternal and cyclical movement of all phenomena, to the rhythm of the individual and collective melody...

​A ritual of life and death, but also - as in a very ancient past - as daily as the rising and setting of the sun.