This panel integrated in the Dança Sem Idade programe combines both artistic and academia specialists who seek to research the theme of the aging body and its visibility, specifically focusingon the dance but also approaching the body in contemporary society. There will be participations of Ana Macara, Emma Lewis, Kaite O’Reilly, Nanako Nakajima, Ramsay Burt and Susanne Foellmer.
Dança Sem Idade is centered in the issue of age and aging as a process, wether in the dance or in the general society perspectives. The different activities’ articulation aims to contribute to the breaking down of pre-conceived ideas and yet poorly debated regarding the age up to which one is able to dance, and the audience’s expectations when confronted with a body out of the conventional parameters.
The project puts into dialogue dance professionals who are aged older than 40 years old and academia personalities, from several countries, claiming the space and visibility for less younger bodies who are not in the glow of physical exuberance, but which in all their accumulated experience and motor intelligence can still question and conquer audiences.
There will be 3 days of artistic practices , open to the participation of professionals who are older than 40. Each day, there will be a different work proposal led by artists with differentiated languages and practices among themselves, such as Nacera Belaza, Ali Chahrour and Francisco Camacho. Such diversity should contribute for these participants’ artistic activation and recycling. In the plan of theoretical reflection, there will be the promotion of a symposium with relevant personalities from the academic research developed within this field, in the international context, as well as a conversation after the presentation of VELHⒶS, with its choreographer Francisco Camacho and the choreographer and researcher Susanne Martin, in a dialogue regarding their own artistic practices and perspectives, with moderation by the cultural activist journalist Carla Fernandes. VELHⒶS gathers a group of professionals who are past their 50s, with live music by Sérgio Pelágio, and with the generous participation of older Lisbon inhabitants.