Maria Ramos

Maria Ramos serves as Visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Dance, Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon, where she teaches contemporary dance techniques. A Lisbon-based choreographer and dancer, she maintains active creative collaborations across Portugal, the Netherlands, Argentina, and beyond following her professional development in European and American dance scenes.

Her academic foundation includes:

• Dance training at ArtEZ University of the Arts (1996-2000)
• Master's in Choreography from ArtEZ Institute of the Arts (2006-2008)
• Research and Creation certification from Forum Dança, Lisbon (2009)

Ramos' research interrogates the relationship between movement and narrative construction through choreographic practice. Her methodology synthesizes release techniques, contact improvisation, and cognitive approaches to dance, drawing from decades of collaboration with pioneers of the Judson Dance Theater movement. She investigates how physical practices like T'ai Chi Ch'uan inform embodied cognition and choreographic decision-making, particularly examining walking as a thinking methodology in performance contexts.

Her artistic projects A Certain Degree of Immobility (including 7pm/Rumour, Nerves Like Nylon, and Something Still Uncaptured) and Árida received institutional backing from DGArtes and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. While mentoring dancers through her teaching positions at Forum Dança, ESAD.CR, and the School of Dance, formal academic advisees remain undocumented in available records.