INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF LEARNING | Dinis Machado Research Lab

Movement Mazes Whispering Fictions (in the Garden)
10 places max
Outdoors and at Siobhan Davies Studios

How can we daydream together through movement? From which fictions do we move and which fictions do we produce with this dance. In this lab, Dinis Machado will explore with the participants ways to transpose, give and inhabit movement experiences, puzzles, and spells, amongst other moving enigmas mixing up fictional formalisms, un-essentialist somatics and queered minimal endeavours.

We will observe how layers, narratives and possibilities build up in the body. What if one's body stays in gifted movement? If we inhabit foreign movement, is it an attempt to shapeshift into another body. How can we focus on movement as a codified and layered abstraction rather than a shape, in order to make it transferable to and transformable by different bodies. Through a continuum of movement travelling through bodies, this lab will explore the sustaining of a common body where we relate to each other at a distance but with intimacy - a collective enactment of togetherness which is as abstract as it is political, in a park.

This workshop is open to all participants who have a performative practice; no specific prior training experience is required.

Biography

DINIS MACHADO (Sweden/Portugal)
(They, Ela, Hen)

With a background in dance and visual art, Dinis Machado’s work is informed by how the sculptural construction of objects, spaces and bodies is reclaimed and worked as choreographic material. In a post-somatic perspective, and caring about bodies that do not conceive, perform or imagine themselves as they are medically described, Machado works with ideas of mutation and transformation - psychedelic bodies that they imagine, claim, and consubstantiate for themselves.

Born in Porto, Machado has been based in Stockholm since 2012. They studied MA Choreography DOCH (Stockholm), Independent Studies Program at Maumaus – Visual Arts (Lisbon), BA in Theatre by ESTC (Lisbon) and studied ballet and contemporary dance at Balleteatro (Porto) from 1994-2002. In 2020 Machado was awarded the Birgit Cullberg Stipendium by the Swedish Art Grants Committee / Konstnärsnämnden. Their works Site Specific For Nowhere and Cyborg Sunday were part of Moderna Museet's quadrennial Moderna¬utställning¬en (2018). Their work has been presented in Austria, Croatia, Uruguay, France, Sweden, Germany, England, Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Portugal in contexts such as ImpulsTanz, Weld, Dance 4, Chelsea Theatre, FIDCU, NAVE, Festival Arqueologias Del Futuro, ZDB/Negócio, METAL, Chisenhale Dance Space, Colchester Arts Centre, Rivoli, CCB, Festival DDD, Citemor, AGORA, Reflektor M, among others.

Image: performer Vicky Malin in installation Practicing Paradigm by Dinis Machado, Nottingham. Photo Dinis Machado