Patuá Dance

Fernanda Amaral Artistic Director and founder of PATUÁ DANCE established in 1993 in Wales in UK, a community and professional Dance-Theatre organisation that lead workshops and performs in the UK and in other countries.

PATUÁ DANCE participated in several festivals including WOMAD (World of Music and Dance), Reading and Glastonbury with performances and workshops.

The company brought together artists from various nationalities to create dance-theatre pieces for unconventional spaces, inspired by Comedia d’larte, Brazilian dances, street theatre and dance-theatre. The company’s repertoire included Moving, Carnival of Souls, Saudade – Hiraeth, The Ladies, Cleaners, Day out. The company toured England, Ireland, Wales, Spain and Brazil.

The company’s principal aim was to have direct and immediate contact with the audience and to work with the presence of the performers and dancers for this dialogue.

PATUÁ DANCE performed annually with dance-theatre performances at various festivals such as WOMAD, Glastonbury, Manchester Festival, Reading Festival, among others. The company, for eighteen years, was based at the Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff. The name of the group represented first the meaning in Brazilian Portuguese language as an object that brings luck, being the dance the patuá of the company; and the second patuá with the meaning of a mixture between two or more languages, creating a new language, being the dance made by PATUÁ DANCE made by the mixture of the dances of each participant.

PATUÁ DANCE had a team of multidisciplinary professionals, who worked in educational projects that included diverse artistic forms (storytelling, fine arts, music, theatre and dance) and people of diverse abilities, ages, backgrounds and cultures. The company created projects that included people in vulnerable situations, women in heroin rehabilitation programs, school dropouts, Catholic children and Protestants at the time of the IRA conflicts in Northern Ireland.

PATUÁ DANCE´s work with diversity led the company and its director, Fernanda Amaral, to work with people of different abilities and create shows such as “WE ARE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT”. This performance included 180 young people, an orchestra with 20 young people playing a NEW composition by a Welsh composer, based on Brazilian and Celtic music. WE ARE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT was performed in the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff and at the River Front in Newport, both venues in Wales, focused on presentations of prestigious performances. Many of the youth and their families had never been to these venues or seen a performance in a theatre before. They also had no contact with many artistic forms and with people from different communities with and without disabilities.

“We are all in the same boat!” 2005

Performance with 180 children and young people including various skills, nationalities and cities in Wales. It had a Special participation of a young orchestra playing music composed especially for “We all are at the same boat”, by the Welsh composer Peter Steacy.

Patuá DanceAbility

The work with mixed ability led PATUÁ DANCE and its director to win several awards that led to a meeting with Alito Alessi, creator of the DanceAbility method.

Patuá DanceAbility – 2006/2011

It has carried out research projects, performances and numerous schools projects in Wales, with grants from the Wales Arts Council, Wales Arts International and County Councils in partnership with Chapter Arts Centre.

Paissagem – Memory Lanscape

Patuá DanceAbilty’s choreography by Fernanda Amaral created this professional dance performance with dancers with and without disabilities and tours in Wales and England, sponsored by the Arts Council of Wales.