BIOGRAPHY
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Tiago Manquinho is a choreographer and cultural producer working in contemporary dance with a strong focus on collaboration, inclusion, and long-term partnerships. His work spans stage productions, community-based projects, education, and structural development within the dance field. He collaborates closely with dance companies, theatres, universities, cultural institutions, municipalities, and socio-cultural organisations in Germany and Portugal.
After completing his dance education at the Escola de Dança do Conservatório Nacional in Lisbon, he began his professional career with the Companhia Nacional de Bailado. In 2000, he moved to Germany and joined the Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden. He later worked at Staatstheater Braunschweig, Städtische Bühnen Osnabrück, and Theater Bielefeld, where he performed an extensive classical and contemporary repertoire. He danced works from choreographers like John Neumeier, Uwe Scholz, John Cranko, Vaslav Nijinsky, Mary Wigman, Reinhild Hoffmann, Guilherme Botelho, Jo Strømgren, Roni Haver and Guy Weizman, Simone Sandroni, André Gingras, and Gregor Zöllig. These years shaped his artistic signature and laid the foundation for his later focus on co-creation and horizontal working structures.
From 2015 to 2017, he served as resident choreographer at Staatstheater Braunschweig. Since 2017, he has worked as a freelance choreographer, creating productions for and with theatres and dance companies such as Theater Lüneburg, Theater Münster, Theater Vorpommern, Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, Stadttheater Gießen, as well as with international partners. His choreographic work explores social topics, power relations, social interaction and the ambivalence of relationships. He focuses on essential and existential aspects of human experience, allowing complex social questions to emerge through physical and emotional depth.
Since 2014, he has been a lecturer in contact improvisation at Bielefeld University, Faculty of Sports Science. He also teaches professional ensembles and leads workshops and trainings at theatres, universities, and professional programs in Germany and abroad. His teaching reflects the same principles as his artistic work, focusing on awareness, relation, responsibility, and shared authorship.
In 2013, Tiago Manquinho received the Tanztaler Award from the Theater- und Konzertfreunde Bielefeld.