OU.kupa is an artistic creation project, dedicated to thought and research on street dance culture, clubbing, and ballroom. It celebrates alternative histories of dance, supporting creators and giving visibility to dance languages from non-formal contexts. This project arises from the need to document and construct an alternative history of dance in Portugal. An archive on street dance and clubbing is assembled through a series of creations, exhibitions, training sessions with DJ sets, conversations, balls, and battles, addressing bodies, names, and the topics of migration, periphery, absence, and resiliency.
This a project by Associação VAI, a non-profit cultural association that promotes artistic creation in multi- and interdisciplinary contexts, as well as production, programming, distribution, education, and edition. It is active in the fields of the performing arts, the visual arts, music, new media, sustainability, and social intervention, focusing on creation and the organization of events, conversations, conferences, debates, exhibitions, and performances, on the principle of intersection and transversality. It organizes workshops and training in its areas of intervention. It assembles and organizes archives for the creation of a library and media library. It operates with an interdisciplinary approach and both nationally and internationally, activating synergies between people, territory, and cultures and fostering connections between different agents in the regions within its range of activity. It designs artistic and community intervention strategies, as well as educational and artistic creation programs.
