TIAGO MANQUINHO

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Tiago Manquinho is a freelance choreographer and cultural producer working in contemporary dance. He collaborates closely with dance companies, theatres, educational institutions, and socio-cultural partners.
Manquinho’s movement language is precise and layered, developed through close collaboration with performers.
He works with weight, touch, and spatial awareness, informed by contact improvisation and somatic practices. Movement emerges through dialogue, sustained research, and shared decision-making in the studio.
His work examines how bodies relate, support, resist, and adapt within changing social contexts. Ambivalence, interdependence, and depth shape the physical material. He values clarity over display, presence over virtuosity, and form shaped by intention. Each process develops a distinct movement vocabulary rooted in the people involved and the specific production context.
His work focuses on essential and existential aspects of human experience, allowing complex social questions to surface through physical and emotional depth.
He is the founder and artistic director of act:on, a platform combining independent dance productions with community-based and socio-cultural initiatives developed through long-term cooperation with institutions and local partners. His practice connects artistic creation with social responsibility, inclusion, and fair working conditions.
Collaboration, shared authorship, and horizontal working structures define his approach. Alongside stage productions, he develops participatory and intergenerational projects, often in rural and underserved regions.
Manquinho is artistic director of the Lezíria Dance Collective in Portugal, co-founder and board member of TANZKOOP Niedersachsen e.V. and Tanznetz Niedersachsen e.V. He regularly teaches professional ensembles and has been a lecturer in contact improvisation at Bielefeld University since 2014.