Pivô Pesquisa 2026 Study Program features conversation with Marilene Felinto and workshop with Carolina Mendonça

Pivô Pesquisa – Performative Practices, Pivô’s artistic residency program, launches the 2026 Study Program with two activities taking place in September at iBT – Instituto Brasileiro de Teatro, a partner in this edition of the project.

On September 3, Pivô invites the public to a conversation with writer and journalist Marilene Felinto, from 7pm to 8:30pm. The free and open-to-the-public event draws from the writer’s work and trajectory, focusing particularly on the books “As mulheres de Tijucopapo” (1982) and “Corsária” (2025). Mediated by choreographer and playwright Carolina Mendonça, the curator coordinating this edition of Pivô Pesquisa, the conversation examines a form of writing in which language always seems foreign, fiction is the closest one can come to history, and family appears in all its rawness and complexity.

Bringing literature and performative arts into dialogue, the conversation proposes thinking about writing as a practice: how is a singular language constructed? What times, tools and conditions make it possible to sustain an artistic trajectory over decades, beyond the more immediate rhythms of visibility and circulation? The conversation will be a space for listening to how Felinto develops different relationships with writing, research and artistic practice.

On September 8 and 9 (Tuesday and Wednesday), choreographer and playwright Carolina Mendonça leads the practical workshop “Choreographic Studies – Muscle Dreams,” from 10:30am to 2:30pm. Registration is free via the online form available here.

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 workshop proposes experimenting 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.

Study Program: Pivô Pesquisa – Performative Practices

Conversation with Marilene Felinto
September 3 (Thursday)
7pm – 8:30pm
iBT – Instituto Brasileiro de Teatro (1st Floor | Salão)
Avenida Brigadeiro Luís Antônio, 277
Free admission

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.