CiM - Dance Company
Created in 2007, CiM - Dance Company is an 18-year-old project that fosters the social and professional inclusion of people with and without disabilities, as an active agent in the performing arts.
Its main activities are the creation and circulation of shows, as well as educational training through regular classes and rehearsals, workshops and other training activities.
Through a pioneering approach and the collaboration of various professionals, CiM provides its performers with access to culture, promoting the acquisition of knowledge and the development of personal and social skills. The aim is to enable each performer to exercise citizenship assertively, assuming their rights and duties and contributing to responsible community participation.
CiM's repertoire includes 15 shows, presented in more than 35 cities in Portugal and 14 countries abroad, involving more than 100 artists with and without disabilities. The training component is also substancial: CiM has held more than 50 workshops, with more than 2,500 participants, and its artistic journey has been shared with over 300,000 spectators.
CiM's aim is to disseminate, share and replicate experiences with different communities, institutions and stakeholders through awareness-raising activities. The company continues to explore new aesthetic domains and choreographic styles, questioning the body, its form and its boundaries, as well as the methods used to work with it, focusing always on artistic and professional quality and on training performers.
The company's work has already been recognised with several awards, including the National Inclusion Award, the Acesso Cultura Award and an Honourable Mention from BPI Capacitar. CiM has impacted the lives of everyone around it, using different means to promote the idea of community and sharing.
On Tour
Shows
PEPAArts Education Project
The PEPA Project is a professional training programme structured around a 3-year academic cycle, developed by CiM, which provides access to various artistic languages that are fundamental to the development of the company's multidisciplinary work.
The project promotes the full involvement of performers, invests in artistic quality and accessibility, and encourages a practice based on critical reflection, sharing and commitment to the creative process.
Over the course of 3 years, regular training is organised in classes and rehearsals based on contemporary dance technique, complemented by other movement techniques essential to a dancer's training.
The performers who take part in the project have access to occasional training with guest choreographers, both national and international, complementary training in other artistic areas, such as theatre, cinema and writing, and participation in events and festivals organised by Vo'Arte, promoting a broad and contextualised artistic experience.
The final year of training is dedicated to professionalisation, and creates concrete opportunities for the practical application of the knowledge acquired. Performers are integrated into artistic processes by participating in CiM creations, in the form of performances or choreographic workshops, as well as in international projects, including intensive training weeks in Portugal and abroad. This direct contact with the artistic environment allows the performers to experience the processes and rhythms of creation and rehearsal, preparing them for integration into the professional context.
DES-ACERTO
A show celebrating the company's 15-year journey and its artistic, performative and pedagogical work, with the unique feature of bringing to the stage performers from the PEPA - Educational Project for the Arts, and professional dancers.
DES-ACERTO seeks to reinvent the time and space interrupted for two years by the pandemic, a bridge between the portrait of before and now, where desires, fears and challenges still exist. Words and movements occur in suspended encounters, in acts of decision and action, so that the body marks a unique moment of sharing.
Recreating CiM
Community
Integrate
Participatory
Movement
Collective
CiM - Dance Company intends to develop, within the national territory, a contemporary dance training cycle through inclusive work. Recreating CiM results in an artistic project that involves different communities in a triangulation of artistic mediation within the territory in which it operates.
With the involvement of CiM's artistic team, this training cycle culminates in a final presentation, open to the public. The project focuses on promoting the active participation and integration of people with disabilities in artistic activities in the fields of dance, movement and artistic interdisciplinary practices, as well as the participation of professionals and students in the performing arts, with the goal of developing dance techniques and tools within an inclusive and accessible framework.
CiM aims to involve local associations interested in participating in this project, promoting a collective process of sharing and creation in collaboration with the company.
Its broad intervention is aimed at different communities (families, children and seniors), seeking to bring together local artists and to affirm inclusive artistic work as a tool for creation, participation and social innovation.
Based on a triangulated approach between the company, associative network and organisations managing presentation venues (theatres, auditoriums, among others), the project aims to strengthen territorial engagement and ensure the necessary conditions for public presentation.
The project also includes moments of debate with local organisations working in the artistic and social fields, promoting dialogue on the importance of participatory art and how artistic creation can act as a driver for human development.
Mafra
2026 . Mafra
Team
Ana Rita Barata
Artistic director of CiM, which she founded in 2007, has developed a career centred on contemporary and inclusive creation, integrating performers with and without disabilities. Her work combines dance and other languages, questioning the body, accessibility and artistic participation. Has developed repertoire for both stage and public space, promoting community projects and establishing CiM as a benchmark for inclusive dance in Portugal.
Pedro Sena Nunes
Artistic director of CiM, he is a director, producer and cultural programmer. Develops projects in film, documentary, fiction and experimental video, investigating the relationship between body and image and working with artists with and without disabilities. Throughout his career, he has explored the intersection between cinematographic practices and the performing arts. He co-created the project Geração SOMA and took part in European initiatives.
Bruno Rodrigues
Artistic and pedagogical director of CiM, performer, creator and trainer. With a degree in Dance from the Escola Superior de Dança, he works between choreographic creation, performance, training and community art. His practice is centred on inclusion and valuing the diversity of bodies - normative and non-normative - promoting accessible and participatory artistic processes, where art is built with everyone.
Joana Gomes
Has a degree in Information Science from the University of Porto and administrative training at ACAPO. She started in inclusive dance with FRAGILE (2011-2013), took part in the Unlimited Access and co-created Kidneys. Has worked with Rodolfo Quintas, Madalena Vitorino and Tânia Carvalho. She has been part of CiM since 2013 in shows such as Edge, Contra-light, Memento, Kidneys and Rh. In 2024 creates In Another Way, about visual impairment.
