KickOff’25

With the aim of promoting complementary training for professional dancers or those in the process of becoming professional dancers, focusing on technical development, dance language diversity, and knowledge exchange, we established the EVC Training Program and the Kick-Off Program with the support of GDA. The three invited instructors for this year’s editions have established their own language and methodology over the past few years, and they are unanimously recognized by their peers.

Kick Off ’25

Falling Into Movement in Connection, with João Cardoso

In recent years, both as a dancer/performer and as a teacher, João Cardoso has shown a growing interest in contact improvisation techniques and in their application to both horizontal floorwork and vertical movement in contemporary dance classes. Connection with music plays a crucial role in this class model, for it serves as a vehicle for practicing a playful body, one that enjoys moving energetically. Practice itself begins with shared or individual moments of “resetting the body”, whether through breathing exercises, by exploring fatigue, or by improvising from points of contact. On the one hand, practice evolves into movement research patterns, focusing on touch as a tool to awaken forgotten parts of the body. On the other hand, it engages in floorwork techniques, fostering awareness of transitions between horizontal and vertical settings and challenging the concept of a “collective mind”. Sprinkled with a touch of expressive drama, this practice invites the development of bodies and minds that are capable, gentle, humble, curious, aware, and intimately connected to the sheer pleasure of dancing and moving.

Práticas Anímicas [“Soul Practices”], with Pedro Ramos

These movement practices assemble a series of techniques linked to the body, both inside and outside an artistic context, and which combine choreographic experiences, yogic and somatic techniques, alchemical studies, and tuning strategies. Experiences in which the body, as a psycho-physical unity, is engaged and is brought to the foreground in a dialogue with space, breathing, and its own inner dimension. The body as a “piece of nature” to be rediscovered as its movement becomes conscious. Through the shaping of presence is thus explored a set of perceptual tasks which lead to movement and sound, and which might result in other forms of expression: words, visual writing, or sound writing.