Joana Providência

I believe in insignificant things. Just as I believe in big things. They dance with each other. The world is a great ball. Everything has its pair, nothing dances alone, however lonely it may be: poetry dances with music, eggs with chicken, the sea with the sky, the sky with the clouds, vices with virtues, lemon with ginger, shoes with walks in the park, balls of thread with cats’ paws, evilness with everyday life and patience with age. — Afonso Cruz
We are going to discover, share and imagine new dance steps, full of small people who turn into big people, and big people who turn into small people. — Joana Providência


Joana Providência was born in Braga in 1965. She began studying Classical Dance with Fernanda Canossa. In 1989 she finished a course at the Escola Superior de Dança of the Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa, with a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. For an end-of-course project she created Mecanismos, a work that would be awarded the “Seven Gold – Revelation”. In her choreographic work, she has developed a personal language of composition where she favors the performer/choreographer relationship. She has been part of the artistic direction of the company ACE / Teatro do Bolhão since 2002, the date of its foundation, a company with which she has regularly developed her work as a creator. Of her vast creations as a choreographer stand out Inquietações, co-production Teatro do Bolhão / Teatro Municipal do Porto; Território, based on the work of Alberto Carneiro, co-produced by Teatro do Bolhão / Culturgest / Comédias do Minho, and Mão na Boca, based on the work of Paula Rego, co-produced by Teatro do Bolhão / Fundação de Serralves. She participated in several festivals such as New Moves, in Glasgow; Autumn Festival, in Madrid; Spring Dance in Utrecht; Klapstuck, in Leuven; Tanzplattform, in Frankfurt, and Chantiers d'Europe, at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris.