Dramaturgies of Performance
International Conference
About
Dates
2–5 December 2026
The Dramaturgies of Performance International Conference takes place ten years after the Portuguese Performance Art Symposium: 2 cycles for an archive, held at the CCB in Lisbon. Over the past decade, a period in which performance art has gained historical recognition within peripheral contexts, performance has emerged as a central operator of contemporary international culture — a phenomenon described as the “age of performance” by authors such as McKenzie (2001), Lepecki (2016), and Sennett (2025). This centrality has expanded, establishing a relationship between traceable creative procedures in performance art and dynamics of meaning generated through dramaturgical relations with diverse disciplinary or thematic contexts.
We think of performance dramaturgies as starting from the forward slash, /. This oblique bar serves as a symbol to emphasize the extensions and, at the same time, hybridizations of the areas that performance has encompassed. The oblique meaning also serves to account for the ambiguities intrinsic to performance dramaturgies.
Enquiring into the nature of dramaturgy is an increasingly frequent endeavour, yet the answer remains ever more elusive and imprecise at a time when the term has gained significant "appeal". As Anne Hamilton and Walter Chon observe in Dramaturgy: The Basics (Routledge, 2023), in the contemporary era, rather than being merely a text or even a practice, dramaturgy is an activity that “allows for a subjective investment in a theme and its consideration across a 360º axis”. These authors further state that “what lies at the heart of dramaturgy is the heart itself”, allowing us to pose vital questions such as “what matters and why?” and “what does it mean to be human?”
Therefore, rather than a science, dramaturgy — or the role of the dramaturg — presents itself as a creative, speculative, and catalytic sensibility; it is simultaneously investigative, laboratory-based, and problematising. As Georgelou, Protopapa, and Theodoridou suggest in The Practice of Dramaturgy: Working on Actions in Performance (Valiz, 2016), whether “with dramaturgs” or “without dramaturgs”, it involves all those who participate in the conception of an artistic process. Consequently, the foundation of dramaturgy lies in questioning, often collectively. It involves adopting the role of the "ignorant dramaturg" when faced with a problem or issue, as highlighted by Bojana Cvejić in The Ignorant Dramaturg (Sarma, 2010), and through collaborative and participatory means, asking questions that engage with the contemporary world, embracing what she terms “uncertainty”, “risk”, and “daring”.
Today, this process implies not only dynamics of interweaving, texture, and interconnection between different cultures, techniques, and media — as noted by Fischer-Lichte, Weiler, and Jost in Dramaturgies of Interweaving: Engaging Audiences in an Entangled World (Routledge, 2022) — but also concepts such as citizenship, radical and agonistic democracy, positioning, and responsibility. In their intersection with performance and its conflicting, oblique meanings, these concepts are re-inscribed between life and art as an Agora, within the continuous performative rewriting of the body-archive-world.
The International Conference on Dramaturgies of Performance is organised by the Performance & Cognition Group of the Institute of Communication at NOVA University Lisbon (ICNOVA-FCSH-UNL), in partnership with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Coimbra (FLUC-CEIS20).
The Conference will be a meeting place for Keynotes, Workshops, Performances and Communications or Conference-Performances from different oblique vectors of Performance Dramaturgy.
December 2nd will be dedicated solely to workshops, some of which will be spread across the conference days from December 3rd to 5th. We will publish the workshop programme shortly to allow for further registration.
Keynote Speakers
Bojana Cvejić
Born in Belgrade (YU) and based in Brussels since 2001, she is a practicing dramaturg and writer whose research spans performance theory, critical theory, philosophy and dance studies. She is the author of “Choreographing Problems: Expressive Concepts in European Contemporary Dance and Performance” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015; Maska, 2021 in Slovenian) and co-author of five books, most recently “Toward a Transindividual Self: A Study in Social Dramaturgy” (co-written with Ana Vujanović 2022). Cvejić is a Professor of Dance Theory at Oslo National Academy of the Arts. She has been affiliated with P.A.R.T.S. (Brussels) since 2002 where she teaches performance and dance theory and oversees the theory program. Since 1996, Cvejić has made, performed and collaborated on numerous works of music theater, dance, and theater in Europe as co-director, dramaturg or performer. Cvejić also co-authored several videos and video-installations exploring dance and choreography, such as …in a non-wimpy way… (with Steve Paxton, 2013), Yvonne Rainer’s WAR (2013) and Spatial Confessions (for Tate Modern, 2014). Her research in social choreography, transindividuality, and practical dramaturgy drives her politically to co-organize collective platforms of self-education and experimental production (Performing Arts Forum, Saint-Erme since 2005; TkH/Walking Theory 2001-17). Bojana collaborates with Jonathan Burrows on his research on the felt sense of making and choreography as a medium of motor cognition.
Janaína Leite
Janaina Leite is an actress, director, playwright, and postdoctoral researcher at the School of Communications and Arts of the University of São Paulo (ECA-USP). In recent years, through works such as Stabat Mater, Camming 101 Nights, and History of the Eye—a porn noir fairy tale, she has been exploring the relationships between theater and pornography, with a particular interest in hybrid languages and the “on-scene” perspective, which brings together theater and performance, art and life, exploring the blurred boundaries between artistic and anthropological practices. In 2024, at the invitation of the Lift Festival in London and the Clean Break company, she premiered The Trials and Passions of Unfamous Women, bringing together legal practices and theater. Her latest work, Deeper, is an immersive virtual reality experience in which she investigates the digital universe and dissociative states of consciousness in extreme situations. This research also gave rise to the lecture-performance O corpo material e imaterial em suas borderlines [The Material and Immaterial Body on Its Borderlines], presented in Brazil, Chile, and Portugal. Combining theory and practice, she published, in 2014, through Editora Perspectiva, the book Autoescrituras Performativas: do Diário à Cena [en. Performative Self-Writings: From Diary to Stage] and, in 2025, released O Feminino e a Abjeção - Ensaios sobre a (Ob)cena Contemporânea [en. The Feminine and Abjection: Essays on the Contemporary (Ob)scene] through Annablume. Her work has been presented in countries such as France, Spain, Portugal, Chile, Belgium, Mexico, the Netherlands, and Germany. She is currently developing the new project A caixa preta ou how to hide the turtle [en. The Black Box or How to Hide the Turtle” on death and image in the digital age].
Sarah Fdili Alaoui
Sarah Fdili Alaoui is a choreographer, dancer, Laban Movement Analyst and a reader at the Creative Computing Institute at the University of the Arts London in interaction design, human-computer Interaction, and dance and technologies. She holds a PhD in Art and Science from the University Paris-Sud 11 and the IRCAM-Centre Pompidou and LIMSI-CNRS research institutes. She has an MSc from the University of Joseph Fourier and an Engineering Degree from ENSIMAG in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, and about 30 years of training in ballet and contemporary dance. Her research interests include intersection of interaction design with dance-making and choreography. Sarah Fdili Alaoui has been an Initiator of a vast number of artistic research projects and collaborations with dancers, choreographers, and technologists to create interactive dance performances and interactive installations, as well as systems for supporting choreography and dance learning, documentation, and archiving.
André Lepecki
André Lepecki (Brazil 1965) – Essayist, dramaturge, and independent curator based in New York City. Full Professor, Department of Performance Studies, New York University and Associate Dean, Center for Research & Study, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. Doctoral degree from NYU. Editor of several books in performance and dance theory and author of Exhausting Dance: performance and the politics of movement (2006, published in fifteen languages); Singularities: dance in the age of performance (2016); Idiorrítimia (2018); and Co(reo)imaginar: ensaios com a dança e a performance (2026). Curator of festivals and projects for HKW-Berlin, MoMA-Warsaw, MoMA PS1, the Hayward Gallery, Haus der Künst-Munich, Sydney Biennial 2016, among others. “Best Performance Award 2008” from AICA/US for co-curating and directing the redoing of Allan Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (Haus der Kunst 2006, PERFORMA 07). Since 2008 he collaborates in several of Brazilian artist Eleonora Fabião’s actions. In 2024 he curated the online exhibit Soiled–Paul McCarthy’s early performance works (1971-76) for Xavier Hufkens gallery.
Call for Proposals
We invite researchers and artists to submit proposals for papers, lecture-performances, performances, or other formats (within the logistical constraints of the conference and limited to 15 minutes), in Portuguese or English, taking into account the thematic strands outlined below:
Suggested Conceptual Areas
Guidelines for Proposals
We accept proposals in English or Portuguese, in a single PDF document (up to 10 MB). Proposals must include:
- Title of the proposal
- Indication of conference themes
- 3 to 5 keywords
- Abstract (300–500 words) with a brief bibliography
- Optionally, 1 to 2 images
Proposals must be submitted via dedicated form.
Selection Process
Registration & Fees
Deadline
30 September 2026
Payment Information
Please send proof of payment to dramaturgiesofperformance@fcsh.unl.pt to confirm your registration.
Organising Committee
Coordinators
- Cláudia Madeira (ICNOVA-UNL)
- Fernando Matos Oliveira (CEIS20-UC)
Executive Producers
Cláudia Madeira & Miriam Freitas
Organising Committee
Cláudia Madeira, Marta Aksztin, Miguel Simões, Liz Vahia, Silvia Pinto Coelho, Raquel R. Madeira, Miriam Freitas.
Workshop & Performances Coordination
-
Cláudia Madeira, Carla Fernandes, David dos
Santos, Jorge Louraço Figueira, Raquel R.
Madeira, Sílvia Pinto Coelho, Verónica Metelo.
Scientific committee
Ana Pais, António Figueiredo Marques, Carla Fernandes, Cláudia Madeira, Clara Gomes, David dos Santos, Fernando Matos Oliveira, Filipe Figueiredo, Francesca Negro, Jorge Louraço Figueira, Nuno N. Correia, Paulo Filipe Monteiro, Paula Varanda, Pedro Florêncio, Sandra Dias Guerreiro, Sílvia Pinto Coelho, Vânia Gala, Verónica Metelo.
