Filipa is, since a very young age, trained in modern techniques, such as Laban, Graham, Limón and Cunningham, as well as contemporary techniques, like Flying Low, Passing Through, Floorwork, Gaga, Counter Technique and a lot of different improvisation approaches including Hofesh Shechter, Marina Mascarell, Yael Cibulski and Nicolas Cantillon’s FuittFuitt. All these techniques and different approaches to movement, combined with her ballet training, gave her strong tools for body and movement awareness and special attention to details. In her contemporary classes Filipa likes to focus on exploring the body and its countless movement possibilities, always re-setting new “limits”. Sharing of ideas, playfulness, finding the musicality in the movement, its fluidity and the connection of a singular body as a whole are key words for her workshop. In order to achieve all this, Filipa uses her scientific knowledge of anatomy and applies it to the dance/movement context. Each class is focused on one particular body part, normally with priority on the small ones that tend to be forgotten by most dancers and not so explored. For example, sacrum-coccyx, ankle, head/neck and knees. There are brief conversations about the basic anatomy of that specific body part (accompanied by illustrations), followed by an individual exploration of these new ideas and perspective of that body part, to sense how it affects our own bodies in an open and simple context. The class is afterwards focused on how to put these new concepts into practice with specific given movements, a more realistic context for embodying the language of different choreographers, a skill that should be mastered by professional dancers. Take this simple and basic example on the ankle joint: If you study the anatomy of this joint, you can understand the mechanics of its natural movements and how they come to be. By visualizing this mechanism, you can for example apply the principles of ankle flexion and use it to deepen your plié, or use the principles of the ankle’s motion of inversion and eversion, and realize that it will affect the range of movement in your knees, allowing them to rotate in in a natural, and thus healthier way. There is a very strong floorwork component throughout the class. Filipa likes to use the floor as a helper for the dancers to further explore the body part in focus in that class. This approach will also further develop the floorwork technique of the dancers. Always with a soft and connected quality, though energetic and complex, and gradually increasing the distance between the body and the floor. Filipa’s goal with this approach is for dancers of any background and age to not only keep on being curious about their bodies’ possibilities and move them out of their comfort zones, but also to further understand their anatomy, discover new limitations and how to overcome them in a healthy way.

Filipa Amorim is a Portuguese dancer, performer and teacher, currently working between Germany at Staatstheater Braunschweig and Portugal, with a 4-year Bachelor Dance degree from Codarts Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (Rotterdam, Netherlands). In the past she worked as well at Skånes Dansteater (Malmö, Sweden), Theater Hagen (Germany), Companhia Instável (Porto, Portugal) in Shelters, a triple-bill by Hofesh Shechter and at KALE Dance Company (Porto, Portugal) for 4 years. During her career she has worked with choreographers such as Marina Mascarell, Jiří Kylián, Guy Weizmann|Roni Haver, Guy Nader|Maria Campos, Sita Ostheimer, Hofesh Shechter, Roser López Espinosa, Jasmin Vardimon, Kevin O’Day, Ihsan Rustem, Andonis Foniadakis and Cayetano Soto, performing their works in Europe, Toronto (Canada) and New York (USA). For the past 6 years Filipa has participated as co-creator and performer in several interdisciplinary projects as a freelancer by collaborating with other artists like musicians, composers and visual artists. These are some of her choreographic works: Uguisu (Malmö, Kalmar and Kristianstadt, Sweden 2018); Aedon (Rotterdam, Netherlands 2019); TRI _ nity (Hagen, Germany 2020); Self-Portrait (Hagen, Germany 2020 | 26MASDANZA Festival in the Canary Islands, Spain 2021). More recently, Filipa has also been teaching contemporary classes, focused on improvisation and floorwork techniques, for professional dancers and professional companies, as well as dance workshops for non-professional dancers.