PACAP 8 / Mystery School of Choreography
Concept and artistic direction Meg Stuart
Artistic collaboration Ana Rocha
Participants Ana Szopa (PL), António Bollaño (PT), Arash Khakpour (IR), Emily da Silva (BR), Guillermo Tarasewicz (UY), Isabela Rossi (BR/IT), iSaAc iSaBeL Espinoza Hidrobo (EC), Julia Kosałka (PL), Kaya Freeman (PT), María Ibarretxe (ES), Martha Kotsia (GR), Michiru Shin (JP), Natacha Campos (PT), Raul Aranha (IN), Salomé Pham-Van-Hué (FR), Sepideh Khodarahmi (SE/IR), Śomi Śniegocka (PL), Therese Bendjus (DE) and Tiago Vieira (PT)
Co-production PACAP 8 Culturgest | Teatro do Bairro Alto | Anda & Fala | Walk e Talk | Goethe-Institut Portugal, in the scope of Kulturfest festival.
Co-producer in residency PACAP 8 O Espaço do Tempo
PACAP 8 is supported by Alkantara | Casa da Dança – Almada | Fundação GDA | Kees Eijrond Foundation | OPART, E.P.E/Estúdios Victor Córdon | O Rumo do Fumo | Piscina
Every new beginning leads you to a mystery.
Every beginning carries that potential of the unknown.
It relates to how we move, how we hear, how we listen, how we spend time with something, how we see what is around us.
Mystery School of Choreography (MyS) is an unconventional experimental studies programme for performing artists; an interdisciplinary space where a fascination for the metaphysical is intertwined with composition, choreography, and art making.
MyS proposes to create a space that is not about converting or indoctrinating, but about revealing and creating structures for the process of sharing. Themes are approached through moments of reflection, through encounters with artists who share their personal cosmology, expertise and process, and, above all, through collective moments of performance and dialogue.
By starting from a position of not-knowing. MyS seeks to cultivate the attitude of the beginner, letting go of expectations. By starting from what fascinates us, we also practice a sense of wonder, a lucid dreaming together, guided by nature, cause and effect, energetic transformation, disorientation and divination, sacred geometry, rhythmic visions and voice, alchemy, love and politics, non-locality and quantum physics, deep and inner contemplation.
MyS focuses on questions that go beyond purely physical practices and can be explored in a collective dimension, such as: how can we cultivate imagination and wonder in relation to our surroundings and shared realities? How can we engage with uncertainty, unseen forces, and fictional futures as meaningful parts of research and creation? How can we build a collaborative and compassionate practice?
MyS is a step towards a deeper understanding of learning, practice, and the activation of a type of knowledge that is often present in the performing arts, but not directly addressed.
In MyS we sketch possibilities for the future of dance and community.
The first edition of Mystery School of Choreography took place in Portugal in the framework of Forum Dança’s PACAP8 programme. From February to July 2025, Meg Stuart, artistic collaborator Ana Rocha and a group of nineteen participants worked in the Forum Dança studio, in the theatre space at Teatro do Bairro Alto and in the galleries at Culturgest in Lisbon, surrounded by nature and far from the Portuguese capital at O Espaço do Tempo in Montemor-o-Novo, and in São Miguel Island, Azores.
Credits