MARTA CERQUEIRA – UnderLine

We celebrate the beginning of another school year and another edition of Gymnasium with the presentation of a dance performance for children – SubLinhar – by the choreographer and dancer Marta Cerqueira, our first guest artist, who will also hold a dance workshop at Bairro Operário School, where she will work with a class of 4th grade children.

SubLinhar’s scenic element is a line. Marta Cerqueira is the creator and the dancer on stage.
In order to write the word SubLinhar (UnderLine) one needs a point and to trace lines with one´s hand. In order to speak the word SubLinhar it is necessary for a series of sounds to leave one´s mouth. But there are those of few words… And what happens when we are left speechless? If we remove Linha (Line) from the word Sub(Linha)r we can use it to draw in space, insinuating forms, accentuating movements, defining directions or pathways which takes us to a new place, ask the world questions and grow.

Marta Cerqueira was born in Lisbon in 1983. She began dancing professionally at the age of 18. She has devoted her 20-year career exclusively to the performing arts.
On graduating at the age of 18 from the National Conservatory Dance School in Lisbon, she chose contemporary dance to be the epicentre of her multifaceted professional life. With a solid background of classical and modern dance training, she attended several dance schools and studios in New York, Berlin and Lisbon, where she completed the Choreography Course of the Calouste Gulbenkian PGCCA Foundation.
She has worked and collaborated with several choreographers and directors: Anke Blonde, Bruno Pradet, Beatriz Cantinho, Clara Andermatt, Catarina Requeijo, Errol White, Giacomo Scalisi, John Mowat, Luís Guerra, Leonor Keil, Manon Oligny, Maria Ramos, Miguel Moreira, Paulo Ribeiro, Peter Michael Dietz, Sofia Neuparth and Tânia Carvalho among others. She was a guest artist at the Companhia do Chapitô, where she performed and co-created pieces of wide international circulation.
She has collaborated in dance pieces created by Sofia Dias & Vitor Roriz, in videos by Kamila Chomicz, Luis da Matta Almeida / Zeppelin Filmes, Alexandro Farto / Vhils and in the performance “Extensões do Corpo” by Adriana Barreto. She worked as an assistant in Marlene Monteiro Freitas’ project “Prisão” and in the restaging of “Tecedura do Caos”, Tânia Carvalho piece for the Portuguese National Ballet Company.
She has worked in films directed by Jeanne Waltz, Manuel Guerra, Tiago Guedes and Frederico Serra.