MODULATIONS | 25 September, CRL – Central Elétrica, Porto
MODULATIONS : Workshop of research in motion | Workshop with Varinia Canto Vila [InResidence Program]
25 September 2025, 7:00pm – 10:00pm | CRL – Central Elétrica, Porto
This workshop proposes to develop movement-based investigations, exploring elements that allow the generation of a dance that oscillates between different conceptual principles or axes. The idea of oscillation evokes the possibility of softening fixed forms and inviting the body to move in multiple and mutable ways. To this end, principles such as the relationship between movement and the visual field, the active versus the passive body, sequential and residual movement, and the modification of our movements through various operations—such as amplitude, intensity, presence versus absence, the global versus fragmented body, doing versus being—will be explored, among others.
The practices stem from various movement creation experiences developed in the works of Varinia Canto Vila, as well as from her pedagogical approaches. The goal is to generate a dance in constant transformation, always in multiple places—or in none.
Registration is open via form until 23 September 2025.
Capacity: 20 participants.
Varinia Canto Vila
Varinia Canto Vila (Santiago, Chile, 1976) is a choreographer, dancer, cultural manager, pedagogue, and researcher. She studied dance performance at the Conservatory of the University of Chile (1993) and at PARTS (Brussels, 1999). She earned a Master’s in Art and Politics at Goldsmiths University (London, 2014) and a postgraduate degree at a.pass (Brussels, 2017), where she developed work in performance and video.
As a choreographer, she began her career exploring the body and the stage as artistic mediums, creating works such as No Title (2008), Beast (2008), During Beginning Ending (2010), and by getting one’s hands dirty (2017), presented in Belgium and across Europe, where she lived for 24 years. Currently, her work addresses the relationship between art and politics through expanded choreography and the movement of the social body. Since 2016, she has been researching the connection between law and movement, receiving a Fondart research grant in 2019. In 2023, she premiered Maneras de Salir, about socioeconomic distances and proximities, presented at GAM and Nave. In 2024, she created MUNDOS, which explores Chilean social fragmentation, presented in Santiago (CEINA, Pudahuel, and BAJ) and in Valparaíso (CC de Valparaíso), with funding from Fondart.
Regarding her pedagogical experience, Varinia leads several workshops based on the methodologies developed throughout her career as a creator and choreographer. Rather than teaching dance techniques, she shares and facilitates methodologies that foster the opening of imagination and nurture the capacity to question and investigate. She has held workshops in the Prof-Training Program (2019, Santiago de Chile), Aorça Association (2021, Lagos – Portugal), Tanzkongress (2019, Dresden – Germany), Collective Conditions (2019 – Brussels, Belgium), Improspekcije (2021, Europe/Zagreb, online), Laboratorio en La Escuela (2023, online), Nave (2023, Santiago de Chile), Tic Tac Center (2023, Brussels – Belgium), Ponderosa (2023, Berlin – Germany), and Balmaceda Arte (2024, Santiago de Chile).
