ABOUT


​THE PATH OF SOUND, THE VOICE OF GESTURE

I think art is a privileged vehicle for expanding our consciousness. I have been exploring this primarily within the context of the Danza Duende© International Network: Dancing Our Lives, a school founded by Yumma Mudra. This living laboratory of dance, art and the multiple dimensions of life works as a real alchemic experience for the transformation of suffering, allowing our true nature to subtly reveal itself. As we plunge within the intricate depths of our being through movement and art, the awareness of the interdependence of all phenomena becomes clear, as a real offering. A synergetic celebration in which the invisible is just as important as the visible...
​After the study of formal communication, through specializing in foreign languages and literatures, I began focusing on the expression of gesture, in silence and sound. I had suspected from an early age how words fell short on conveying the real meaning of existence. That became the thread of my artistic career, started in 1991 with Flamenco and Spanish Classical Ballet at the Célia Neves School (Lisbon).

As much as the academic world might be appealing, several years of study in Portugal, Spain and Italy led me to question the conventional dance teaching and practice. I then entered a period of deconstruction and research of the artistic expression through contemporary dance: in this context I started exploring improvisation and choreographic, rhythmic and musical composition, as well as voice and sound in the body and the body in voice and sound.  I went on to practice several European and non-European dances, songs and rhythms,  besides starting to explore a more energetic work through chi-kung,  tai chi, kung-fu, theater Nô, butô or body-mind centering. Not long after, I began studying Integral Yoga and was introduced to the Buddhist meditation practice. 

Around 2002 I was drawn into the intensive study and practice of percussion instruments  such as the darbuka, the riqq, the daff, the castanets, the cajón and many others from different origins. 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 have often wondered weather I shouldn't have been a musician instead...

A certified instructor in Danza Duende©, I have been teaching since 2003 in several countries of Europe.
We might describe Danza Duende as the art of creating "fields of wisdom", in which life, dance and art are envisioned and lived in a conscious interdependence: life is seen as our greatest work of art.
Celia Neves, my first dance teacher​
Gipsy Duende is a branch of the Danza Duende network. It is inspired by traditional Romani dances as the art of transforming suffering by surrendering to the present moment. It is about discovering the spontaneous joy of our authentic movement and about recovering the freshness and sincerity of our gesture within a group synergy. In this context, I specialized in dance, music and rhythms of the Romani culture of several European countries. You may read more about my journey with Flamenco and Romani DANCE here. 
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Since 2015 I have also been co-directing the Dragon Retreat: a 7 day retreat in nature developed around the alchemy of suffering through dance and art in its broadest sense. The Dragon Retreat is a preparation for the Cycle of the Dragon, which joins the Danza Duende principles with the skillful tools of Choreosophy. Choreosophy is an artistic path developed by dancer Michel Raji, a quest in which the act of dancing becomes a path of knowledge. The dancer becomes his/her own laboratory, plunging deeply into the time of the body through the rhythm of the breath, the conscious precision of which opens internal and external spaces, micro and macro cosmic ones. This journey is one of opening ourselves to ‘listening’ to ourselves, so that we become that which we already are and thus manifesting, spontaneously, the symbolic dimension of our human nature. 

Along with my dance career, I have been working as a translator and conference interpreter for over twenty-five years. 
Art may lead us to a more humanised and realised society. In the simplicity of a gesture, one returns to the primordial word: sound and rhythm rediscovered and renewed in each inhale and exhale, in each in-pulse and ex-pulse, in each halt and movement... the soul dances in an eternal process of transformation, weaving an artistic path that can reveal all the intelligence of the basically good intrinsic potential of the human being. ​