Português
10:30am – 2:30pm
On September 8 and 9, the 2026 Study Program of Pivô Pesquisa presents the practical workshop Choreographic Studies – Muscle Dreams, led by choreographer and playwright Carolina Mendonça. The activity will take place from 10:30am to 2:30pm at iBT (Avenida Brigadeiro Luís Antônio, 277). Registration is free via the online form. Limited places available.
Over the two days, the artist will share choreographic practices that investigate the relationships the body can establish with listening, narrative, violence and sexuality. Moving between attention to intimate perception and listening to what happens between bodies, the idea is to experiment with ways of accessing knowledge that the body already carries and perceiving the structures, histories and pedagogies that become inscribed and naturalized in our muscles.
The workshop starts from the idea that training the imagination can also be a form of training the body: a way of listening to what we do not yet know how to name, observing the traces that certain experiences leave in the flesh, and asking how the body produces knowledge before, alongside or beyond language. What stories do our muscles carry? What have they learned to do, avoid, desire or defend? What pedagogies write our muscle dreams?
Rather than teaching a technique or proposing a methodology, the workshop will be a space for experimentation and the sharing of tools that run through the artist’s choreographic research: an invitation for participants to investigate how perception, memory, imagination and relationships can become material for creation.
Workshop “Choreographic Studies – Muscle Dreams”
September 8 and 9 (Tuesday and Wednesday)
10:30am – 2:30pm
iBT – Instituto Brasileiro de Teatro (2nd Floor | Multiuse Room)
Avenida Brigadeiro Luís Antônio, 277
Free, with registration via online form.
Carolina Mendonça holds a Master’s degree in Choreography and Performance from the University of Giessen, Germany, and a BA in Performing Arts from ECA-USP, Brazil. Her most recent projects include Something is Approaching (2025), a muscular rumination on how our bodies may be silently preparing for attack; Zones of Resplendence (2023), which speculates on feminist perspectives on violence, presented at Beursschouwburg, Open Studios at Kaaistudios, as part of It Takes a City, and Festival Salmon; Pulp – History as a Warm Wet Place (2018), presented at Mousonturm, which deals with an intuitive archaeology digesting the remains of the 17th and 18th centuries; and useless land (2018), in which, together with Catalina Insignares, she invites audiences to sleep while they read throughout the night. The work has been presented in different contexts, including Maerzmusik in Berlin, La Ferme du Buisson in Paris, Beursschouwburg in Brussels, Sesta in Prague, and NIDO in Uruguay, among others.
Carolina is a dramaturg and research partner of Carolina Bianchi in the Cadela Força Trilogy, which received the Silver Lion at the Venice Dance Biennale in 2025. She was also one of the hosts of NIDO (2022), together with Suely Rolnik and Victoria Pérez Royo, and one of the curators, alongside Marcos Galon and Thereza Farkas, of VERBO (2017) at Galeria Vermelho and the Dance Season (2017) at Videobrasil, both in São Paulo.
She develops a theoretical and practical research practice that she shares through workshops addressing telepathy, levitation, deep listening, and other practices, which have been held at institutions such as Exerce in Montpellier (France), Tabakalera in Donostia (Spain), NIDO in Rivera (Uruguay), HfMDK in Frankfurt (Germany), and Tehran National Theater in Tehran (Iran), among others. She is also co-director of the ISAC department at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels.