Visits from Artists and Guests

Throughout the two years, we received visits from artists, social scientists and teachers of Portuguese who enriched and facilitated our practices: // Anthropologist Catarina Barata and sociologist Alix Sarrouy accompanied the project, producing written reflections and engaging in collective discussions on its social, political, and philosophical aspects. // Sara Meng, a Mongolian teacher living in the Monchique mountains and a Chinese citizen, came to support young Daniel Wang in translating Mandarin/English and in his communication with the group. // Musician Pedro Salvador regularly accompanied the sessions throughout 2022, creating songs and music that he taught to the youngsters and adults, assisting dance rehearsals with musical accompaniment and participating in performances. // The dancer Sara Paternesi and the theatre student Manuel Ruiz offered their bodies and voices to moments of dance and theatre, exercises and games. // In the summer of 2022, architect Clara Queiroz Lopes built a city of sand on Amália beach with adolescents and a shelter made of reeds, stones and saris. // Vocal artist Margarida Mestre worked with words and singing in sessions with adolescents and adults and later, in the performance BOWING BACK, created a choir with songs from various cultures. // The clowns Bibeu et Humphrey developed physical communication and humor with students of PLNM (Portuguese as a non-maternal language). // Marie-Agnès Then and Carmen Cavalcanti lead sessions of Tenchi Tessen, a movement art originating in Aikido and the Japanese sabre, which uses a red fan as an object of communication and encounter. One Chinese student, Daniel Wang, particularly enjoyed this practice and developed a very sensitive and delicate movement solo with the fan, which he presented in the BOWING BACK performance. // In March 2022, we received a visit from Aarhus Friskole from Denmark, a school based on alternative pedagogical methods focusing on music. They came by bus from Northern Europe and stopped at São Teotónio School for a meeting with the young participants, where they exchanged dances, songs and games. // During a week that integrated the summer BOWING program, the artists Marta Carreiras and Romeu Costa organized the Obedience Games, in which they created short performances with the students during the summer holiday. // In addition to the artists' visits, María Salomon and Paulo Vaz, teachers of Portuguese as a non-mother tongue, came to share techniques for learning the language with students from Odemira School. // In December 2022, as part of a Circulation and Joint Learning Initiative (ICAC) of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, there was an exchange between the BOWING and the CORPOEMCADEIA projects led by dancer Catarina Câmara. Madalena, Matilde and Pedro Salvador organized sessions at the Linhó Prison, and Catarina came to Odemira to share movement and creation techniques with adults and young people from the project. // In the context of the Summer Bowing 2023 event, we received Vitorino Coragem (photography), José Torres (graphic design), Nídia Barata (animal caretaker) and Ana Carla Cabrita (nature guide).