MARIA JOSÉ FAZENDA BIOGRAPHY

Maria José Fazenda is Adjunct Professor at the Escola Superior de Dança – Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa (Lisbon Polytechnic’s Higher School of Dance) of Dance Appreciation, Dance History, Dance Anthropology (1^st cycle course) and Dance Analysis in Context (2nd cycle course), and the chairman of the Technical-Scientific Council of the School, since 2007. She is Assistant Guest Professor at Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas - Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities - New University of Lisbon) of Dance in Context (2nd cycle course). She is a research member of the CRIA (Centre for Research in Anthropology – Portugal). She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (Lisbon University Institute), in 2006. Her research focused on theatrical dance understood as a universe of representations through which agents reflect deliberately and creatively on their life and sociocultural reality. She has written about dance for the newspaper Público (regularly between 1992 and 2001, and since then occasionally). She completed the dance course at the Escola de Dança - Conservatório Nacional (Dance School - National Conservatoire, Lisbon), and has worked as a dancer with Paula Massano and Madalena Victorino. She is the author of Dança Teatral: Ideias, Experiências, Acções (2007, Celta) and the editor of the bilingual book Movimentos Presentes: Aspectos da Dança Independente em Portugal / Present Movements: Aspects of Independent Dance in Portugal (1997, Cotovia, Danças na Cidade).