Roberta Fofonka
2015
2017
My name is Roberta Fofonka, I'm a journalist and dancer living in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil.
I started out doing classic dance, then moved on to contemporary approaches, performance art, butoh and somatics. Then I discovered contact improvisation and it was the openning of a great new path of investigation. Since 2015, contact improvisation is my main practice and object of study, and I also have been greatly influenced by Kinomichi and Alexander Technique.
My study in dance was made all in an independent (and intense) way, by doing workshops, regular classes, immersions and festivals, and it keeps burning. It has no end.
Holding clases and sharing my research in contact improvisation has been my way of learning, deepening, and renewing the practice. I believe that presence, the moving body, and the discoveries that one makes during improvisation can all be a useful instrument for art and life itself.
I am currently working in Brazil with the Grupelho dance collective, as director, teacher and dancer, in the first play "Tiger Balm".
Abroad, I collaborate with a group of teachers and friends who make contact improvisation festivals in Peru and Denmark - and everywhere else we can go, and amplify the possibilities of sharing dance. We manage together, dance, teach and create different spaces for sharing contact improvisation with people, mixing our cultures and references. This is also a investigation of paths of teaching contact improv, generating dance triggers and creative atmosphere in group.