Vânia Gala

Author: Vânia Gala

Vânia Gala is a choreographer, curator and researcher. She is part of the collective of artist-curators who represented Portugal at the 2024 Venice Art Biennale with the project “Greenhouse”. She holds a PhD from Kingston University, from which she received a scholarship. She works at the intersection of critical dance studies, performance philosophy, and experimental practices in curation, dance, and performance. Her interests focus on notions of refusal, Black (non)performances, opacity (Glissant), Black ecology, choreographic thought, fugitivity, improvisations, hospitality and value. She was Director of the MA Expanded Dance Practice at the London Contemporary Dance School (London), Director of the BA (Hons) program in Contemporary Performance Practice at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS), and Professor and Coordinator of the MA/MFA Choreography program at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. She has taught at Northampton University, Kingston University and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She is an Associate Professor at the Escola Superior de Dança (Lisbon). Collaborations as a dancer have included the Belgian company Les Ballets C. de La B., Constanza Macras, Dina13 and the Norwegian dance company B.Valiente Kompani. As a choreographer she has collaborated with British artists Sonia Boyce, Harold Hoffeh and the Portuguese theatre company Griot. She works as a consultant and evaluator in international Manifest (EU) projects, is co-organizer of the Theatre, Performance and Philosophy working group of the Theatre of Performance Research Association and was part of the European League of Arts Institutes, acting as a consultant for the EDI group. Performance interventions include “Passa Folhas” (Venice Biennale), “Table for Practices with Legs in the Air” Gulbenkian Foundation and Tramway (Scotland). Recent publications: Greenhouse: Art, Ecologies and Resistance (editor and chapter) and Afroeuropeans: Identities, Racism, and Resistances – Routledge (chapter).

📣 Call For Proposals Theme Title: “On Performance and Borders” 📍Working Group Name: Theatre, Performance and Philosophy| TaPRA ✍️Deadline for submission 10 March 2025 Date|Location of Annual Conference: 27-29 August 2025, University of Warwick Link: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/scapvc/theatre/news-and-events/tapraconference2025/conferencetimeline/theatre-performance-and-philosophy 📍Theme Description: On Performance and Borders For TaPRA 2025, the Theatre, Performance and Philosophy working group invites artists, thinkers, activists, researchers and curators to engage in collaborative praxes of creation focused on notions and lived experiences of intersectional borders, adding to the intricate tapestry of existing reflections and practices on performance and borders. We seek to explore spiritual and philosophical approaches to threshold spaces,…