Context

While studying at the Laban Centre in London, Ana Figueira deepened her understanding of Rudolf Laban’s theories and their practical application to movement, making the connection with Kengo Kuma’s exhibition natural — where architecture approaches the body, matter, and sensory experience. Laban recognized that movement involves both body and mind and developed tools to reveal its meaning. Movement is present in everything we do, and each person’s identity manifests in the way they move.

Laban Movement Analysis offers a way to read gestures as expressions of human intention and emotion. Using the Effort–Shape methodology, it is possible to identify each individual’s movement pattern — how energy is organized in space and time — revealing unique modes of being. Laban defined four dynamic impulses — Action, Passion, Vision, and Spell — reflecting different states of presence and intention, making the emotional and cognitive dimensions of movement visible.

Ana Figueira

Ana Figueira is a choreographer, curator, and cultural manager. Founder and director of Companhia Instável since 1998, she also served as artistic director of Teatro Aveirense. She holds a degree in Dance and a Master’s in Artistic Performance – Dance from the Faculty of Human Kinetics (UTL), and a Postgraduate degree in Arts Management. As an ERASMUS fellow, she studied Choreology and Effort–Shape at the Laban Centre in London, completing the program with top marks. She has taught Labanotation at Ginasiano – Escola de Dança and Fórum Dança, and is certified in the Creation in Public Spaces course (FIAR, 2020), with focus on Dramaturgy for Public Spaces and The Place of Audiences.

Among her projects, she highlights Percursos pela Arquitetura, which she has led for over 15 years — a program that crosses contemporary dance and architecture, proposing new ways of perceiving and inhabiting public space. In this context, she developed her own site-specific creation methodology, applied in emblematic locations such as the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto and the Casa da Arquitectura. In 2023, she conceived the course FOCAR, focused on research at the intersection of dance and architecture, consolidating a trajectory of investigation and practice that questions the boundaries between body, space, and audience. Throughout her career, she has promoted the intersection of body, space, and community, fostering new ways of perceiving and inhabiting the territory through dance.