|BIO|
Fernando Belfiore [1983 – São Paulo, Brazil] is a choreographer, teacher, researcher, and performance artist currently based in Amsterdam. Fernando graduated from the School for New Dance Development at Amsterdam School of the Arts – SNDO/AHK. Before moving to Europe, Fernando studied theater at Escola de Arte Dramática at Universidade de São Paulo – EAD/USP. Fernando is a guest teacher of Movement-Research at SNDO since 2013 and has been teaching workshops, such as SISTER’s performance practice abroad, in places such as Impulstanz, Viena, and Garage Contemporary Museum, Moscow. Fernando also mentors fierce artists and has been invited to curate festivals such as ComeTogether#5.
After graduating, Fernando received a mention of best direction in Spain at ACT Festival and was nominated for ITS Festival Choreography Award with The miserable Thing, a performance on meditations for wealth. After the oily and visceral graduation performance in collaboration with Antonio Onio, Fernando worked on a solo You Must, creating their own scenic devices with the dramaturgic collaboration of Ivo Dimchev and Katarina Bakatsaki followed by the group .whatdowefinallyshare. that was selected for Aerowaves as a priority company 2013. Fernando was selected for the Impulstanz, DANCEWEB scholarship in 2013. Also in 2013, Fernando started to develop the performance improvisation practice called Supernatural together with Florentina Holzinger.
At the end of 2014, the solo on alchemy and practices of the heart, Al13FB<3, was selected to Aerowaves Top Twenty 2016. Since then, Fernando has toured extensively in many European countries, America, and Asia in places such as American Realness Festival in New York, Fierce Festival in Birmingham, in Guangdong Dance Festival, Festival Contemporâneo de Dança in São Paulo, among others. In 2016, Fernando represented The Netherlands at the Olympic Cultural Program in Rio de Janeiro in the dance category creating a mass choreography and installation in collaboration with Dani Lima. Fernando was commissioned to make work for students of FONTYS Academy in Tilburg and directed the gender-bending femme futuristic work D3US/X\M4CHIN4. Fernando is currently working on a series of social sculptures, investigating the power of art to transform the social sphere, with THE CAVE, THE FOUNTAIN, and THE MARKET. During the season of 2018-2019, Fernando got a mention as the most promising new maker in the Theaterjaarboek for the season of 2018- 2019 according to Alexander Hiskemuller from Trouw. Lately, Fernando has engaged in the problem of freelancer work.
Fernando has been artist-in-residence at Dansmakers Amsterdam and was a guest artist of ICK. Fernando is currently part of DANSCO, a nomadic structure for artistic exchange and production, founded together with Vincent Riebeek, Michele Rizzo, Florentina Holzinger, Renée Copraij, and Marieke van Bueren. Fernando also performed in projects by Deborah Hay, Miet Warlop, Ann Liv Young, Ibrahim Quraishi, Matej Kejžar, Bojan Djordjev, Vincent Riebeek, Jeremy Wade, Peaches, and The Knife. Fernando also created a series of social practices in Amsterdam called EXPERIMENTS inspired by LOTE/Cristian Duarte residences and has been collaborating with artists from the local scene and abroad.
Fernando’s works are transdisciplinary based on research, embodiment, and critical thinking, practicing movement as collective action in the public sphere towards critical thinking and social transformation. Fernando explores performance art having the body as his main medium through the hybrid of theater, choreographic questions, and visual arts references. Each work proposes a sensibilization in perceptual experience and experiments with alternative modes of production. In teaching, Fernando facilitates working with each other’s bodies, support strategies, transformative artistic act, and visceral performative audience engagement, and break the normative as a frame.
The performer’s presence and potentialities of the body affects are a strong characteristic of Fernando’s work as well as the environmental materiality that touches upon the body and the consciousness of the body upon creation of playful, public, and spaces of resistance. Also, Fernando searches for challenging forms of engagement within the audience’s bodily experience and via queer aesthetic and praxis, to an audience that expects less linear, ordered, and controlled forms of interdisciplinary choreographic work to the field of dance. Intense, designed, visual and radical, often arriving at places of softness, and delicate transformation, Fernando is intrigued by exploring the politics of the contemporary body and by questioning our social relations. The works question and study capitalist ideology focusing on the critique of individualism and consumerism. All his works present a body that is primitive and vulnerable, which is contrasted with a mix of pop and mass culture elements.
Fernando is an artist influenced by philosophy, sociology, science, and economics creating work that is radical, queer, and transformative. Fernando is trained and influencing practices are capoeira, vogue, B.M.C, butoh, release technique, yoga, contact improvisation, improvisation, acting, and singing. Fernando is an artist creating visceral work, embraces the strangeness and dialogues with the bodies of the audience with experience as form and conceptual performance artwork. Fernando avoids theater completely as an illusion box but seeks for magic. Fernando does not work with dance as a combination of set movements one after the other but as precise sculptural body tasks, scores, and actions to transform the space and the mind, we are hegemonically and ideologically set in. Fernando is searching for the extraordinary within the earthly. We can think and act in today’s world.
CV
PRESS
A stronger “story”, without empty moments is brought by Fernando Belfiore. He is a performance talent to be monitored. By Mirjian van der Linden / De Volkskrant 2011[You Must]
Over signs that rejected stultifying logic, Belfiore made us enter a space of dream reverie, from the surrealist movement alluding to aesthetic fluoride film Liquid Sky (1982), Slava Tsukerman, dragging us to a vertiginous plan, far from dull- reasoned discourses, often in alleged intellectual precepts. It is presented in .whatdowefinallyshare. a limbo of different disciplines that characterized something freer and abdicated a synthetic label, limiter; finally, the work did not appear in exhibiting of a methodology, it was an exchange of excitation above all, which invites us to a ritual that causes a change in our mental states. By Tales Frey / Performatus Magazine [.whatdowefinallyshare.]
It is strong how Belfiore in a bare room with minimal props, manages to create imaginative and intriguing scenes. The energy which the dancers diligently dive into the movements is admirable. Karin van de Wiel / Theaterkrant [.whatdowefinallyshare.]
When the spectator enters the room the performance has already started, as Belfiore moves as in a trance between the people. […] Belfiore is wild, sometimes fragile, sometimes funny but most of all, he delivers a brilliant one-man show. By Olivia Kaiser / Die Rheinpfalz 2015 [Al13FB<3]
With his provocative, sculptural images and loud house-music had bombarded his audiences. With a slightly ironic vanity, the audience gets sucked into his universe. Chameleon Belfiore shows a sweltering forest of images, wherein present and past slowly seem to fuse. By Moss van den Broek / Theaterkrant 2014 [Al13FB<3]
Reminiscent of Kubrick’s apes, Belfiore’s new world is once again thrown into conflict as its survivors search for meaning through the remnants that have survived. The statues, their human forms, become the technology, and in his final monologue, Belfiore’s survivors try to once again become human. AL13FB<3 is a performance of prophetic imagination; through it, Belfiore draws a history of the future to create an image of the present. By Tom O’Dea / Dublin Dance Festival 2016 [Al13FB<3]
Fernando mechanically glitches, stutters and repeats, an abstraction that disrupts the communication into the form itself. There are sensuality and equality between the forms and energies of objects and Fernando’s body. […] There’s a sense of being transported to a posthuman, post-digital cosmos, a place where the real and the virtual have leaked into each other, where the remains of any civilization are just form, sound, light, glitter and the echoing of Sia’s Chandelier. By Phoebe Patey-Ferguson Blog / Fierce Festival 2015 [Al13FB<3]
A magnificent performance full of laughter, tension and lightness, yet it sends me into the world feeling saddened. It seems like the four women in D3US/X\M4CHIN4 by choreographer/ director Fernando Belfiore find themselves in the land of the endless possibilities. They can do everything. Wonderful. This is omnipotence. A fairy-tale. A dream. While moving like predators they crawl over the stage, seductive, superior, severe, sadistic, murderous. They seek intimacy, proximity. They really want to. Boundaries blur. They climb onto the tribune, squirming between the audience and kissing spectators. You can’t go nearer than this. Maarten Baanders / cultureelpeersbureau.nl / 2016 [D3US/X\M4CHIN4]
Belfiore has crafted a kind of consumerist phantasmagoria, a cross-section of desire in the digital age. His dancers hold sincerity disdainfully at arm’s length, like some mythological beast who has outlasted her usefulness. Sebastian Kann / Writing Dance 2016 [D3US/X\M4CHIN4]
The “human fountain” of Fernando Belfiore will certainly challenge passers-by. By M-E.B. / La Provence, M-E.B. 2017 [THE FOUNTAIN]
Fernando is a magician who brings us to different universes. So he can do it if we are going to co-exist with him, let him guide us. Also, he has an effect as hypnotizing… There is a bunch of different references… I can notice popular culture, high culture, ritual, religion, anti-culture, mythology, marketing – Coca Cola, Apple, which might be a new religion. By Anna Volkland / Silent Period during Battle of Critics at Garage Contemporary Museum of Art 2018 [THE CAVE]
” Another young dog that will make the world smell like shit is the Brazilian Fernando Belfiore […] That pretty much marked the overall atmosphere: a colorful evening with both speed and LSD mixed in the fruit bowl.” TROUW [THE MARKET]
“The Market’s visual imagination is great and it is provocative, contemplative, and recalcitrant.””It is, however, surprising and clever what The Market offers us in terms of dance power.” THEATERKRANT [THE MARKET]
THE MARKET
Julidans toont hoe nieuwe rituelen ons kunnen verbinden | Trouw (2022) Sander Hiskemuller (Dutch)
The Market door Fernando Belfiore – Theaterkrant (2022) Kester Freriks (Dutch)
THE FOUNTAIN
MovementExposed (2019) Lucia Fernandez Santoro (English) La provence (2017) Over work for PDU/Redplexus,Marseille (French)(English)
Trouw (2019) Alexander Hiskemuller (Dutch)
THE CAVE
Battle of Critics proposition by Isadorino Gore
In collaboration with Garage Museum in 2018
D3US/X\M4CHIN4
TaniecPolska 2018 Marcin Mietus (Polish)(English) Video Interview 2017 Divadelni Flora (English and Czech) Festivalovÿ Zpravodaj 2017 Barbora Kašparavápage 6-7 (Czech) CultuurPeers 2016 Maarten Baanders (Dutch) (English) Dans Magazine Photo Interview 2016 Thomas Lenden Draff Maganize Video Interview 2016 José Miguel Jiménez (English) Field NOTES WSB 2016 (English) Writing Dance 2015 Sebastian Kann (English) Interview 2015 Zeynep Gunduz (English) TheaterKrant 2015 Moos van den Broek (Dutch)
Al13FB<3
Examiner/Axs 2016 Chris O'Rourke (English) Totally Dublin 2016 Rachel Donelly (English) Wild Card Guest 2016 Tom O'Dea (English) Spring Back Academy 2016 Stella Mastorosteriou/Ka Bradley/Sanjoy Roy (English) PateyFerg's Blog 2015 Phoebe Patey-Ferguson (DocVersionEnglish) OutThere Interview 2015 Emily Carlton (English) Die Rheinpfalz 2015 Olivia Kaiser (Germand) (English) TheaterKrant 2014 Moos van den Broek (Dutch) CJP Interview 2014 Martine Bakker (Dutch) Contemporary Cruising Online Magazine (English)
.whadowefinallyshare.
Performatus 2014 Tales Frey (Portuguese) (English) Dans Magazine 2013 Lisa Reinheimer (Dutch) Interview 2012 Zeynep Gunduz (English) TheaterKrant 2012 Karin van de Wiel (Dutch) (English) Contemporary Cruising Online Magazine (English)
You Must
Volkskrant 2012 Annette Embrechts, You Must over Julidans (Dutch) Volkskrant 2011 Mirjam van der Linden (Dutch) (English)
The miserable thing
Volkskrant, 2011 Mirjam van der Linder, over ITs Festival (Dutch) Art Critique Europe 2011 Charlotte Schultz, over Its ( Dutch) NRC 2012 Herien Wensink, over ACT Festival (Dutch) Make8elieve, Online Magazine Page 53-55 (English)
MoRE
Tanzchreiber 2022 ROOOM#2 Colaboration with Mirjam Sögner (English)
Performa 2020 Adam Kamiński (Polish)
You Better Move#3 Curating Festival Review of works 2017 Theaterkrant (Dutch) Video Interview Paraplet Team / Derida Dance Center-Sofia 2016 (English) Radio Interview Schaduwploeg ITs Festival 2015 (English) Interview by Margô Dalla-Schutte (Portuguese) Report from Ingrid van Frankenhuyzen – EUROPE IN MOTION (Dutch) O Globo Over HOBRA - Residence Carina Bacelar (Portuguese) Schunk- Waar Zijn de NeeZeggers Van Nu- Fransien van der Putt (Dutch) DubbelInterview 2014 SSBA-Salon (Dutch)
WORKS
THE MARKET
2020 MAY Spider Festival – Tivoli Park – In Open Sapce – Ljubljana (Sl)
2020 OCT Festival Préavis de Désordre Urbain – Friche La Bella De Mai – Marseille (FR) MARSEILLE
2021 JUNE Spider Festival – Tivoli Park – In Open Sapce – Ljubljana (Sl)
2021 SEPT Festival Friche La Bella De Mai – Marseille (FR)
2022 JULY – THE MARKET (Kunst=Kapital) – De Waalse Kerk – Red Light Arts & Culture (NL)
2022 JULY – THE MARKET (Kunst=Kapital) – De Waalse Kerk – Red Light Arts & Culture (NL)
2022 JULY – THE MARKET (Kunst=Kapital) – De Waalse Kerk – Red Light Arts & Culture (NL)
2022 JULY Julidans in International Theatre Amsterdam (NL)
2022 JULY Julidans in International Theatre Amsterdam (NL)
THE FOUNTAIN
2019 Paradigm Festival Groningen (NL)
2019 Cometogether#4 Frascati Amsterdam (NL)
2019 Julidans International Theater Amsterdam Studio Premiere Version (NL)
2019 Julidans International Theater Amsterdam (NL)
2019 Julidans Openluchttheater VondelPark (NL)
LA FOUNTAIN FRENCH VERSION PUBLIC SPACE
2017 Festival Préavis de Désordre Urbain – Friche La Bella De Mai (FR)
2017 Festival Préavis de Désordre Urbain – Place Bargemon (FR)
2017 Festival Préavis de Désordre Urbain- Place Bargemon (FR)
2017 Festival Préavis de Désordre Urbain – Vieux Port (FR)
FONTE BRAZILIAN VERSION CULTURAL CENTER GARDEN SPACE
2016 Centro Casa Laurinda de Cultura, Rio de Janeiro – HOBRA Residence (BR)
THE CAVE
2019 OCCI Queer Party Amsterdam (NL)
2018 Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (RU)
2018 De NWE Vorst, Tilburg (NL)
2018 Kikker Theater, Utrecht (NL)
2018 Gran Theater, Groningen (NL)
2018 Staatstheater, Mainz (DE)
2018 Dansmakers Podium, Amsterdam (NL)
E-V
2016 Commissioned to Fremdkörper Festival with students of FONTYS Academy, Tilburg
D3US/X\M4CHIN4
2018 BalletOFF Festival – Krakow – (PO)
2017 Frascati – Amsterdam (NL)
2017 Frascati – Amsterdam (NL)
2017 Flam Frascati – Amsterdam (NL)
2017 Flora Theater Festival – Olomouc (CZ)
2017 Flora Theater Festival – Olomouc (CZ)
2016 DansmakersPodium (NL)
2016 Forum of Live Arts VI, Arti Gallery, Amsterdam (NL)
2016 Working Title Platform#4 – WSB (BE)
2015 Moving Futures Festival Amsterdam (NL)
2015 Theater aan de Rijn, Moving Futures Festival, Arnhem (NL)
2015 Theater Kikker, Utrecht (NL)
2015 Schouwburg de Lawei, Drachten (NL)
2015 LUX Theater, Nijmegen (NL)
2015 WorkSpaceBrussels – Showing Studio ROSAS (BE)
AL13FB<3
Selected to Aerowaves European Platform priority company 2016
2018 Gender Bender Festival – Bologna – (IT)
2018 Gender Bender Festival – Bologna (IT)
2017 M.A.I Montreal Arts Interculturel (CA)
2017 M.A.I Montreal Arts Interculturel (CA)
2017 FLAM ArtFair Rotterdam (NL)
2016 Tanztausch Leipzig Festival, Leipzig (GE)
2016 Open House International Festival, Dance House Lemesos, Cyprus (CY)
2016 Katalyst Festival, Koln (GE)
2016 Dublin Dance Festival, Dublin (IE)
2016 Burgenländische Tanztage, Oberwart (AU)
2016 Spring Forward Festival, DEPO2015, Pilsen (CZ)
2016 Antistatic Festival, Sofia (BG)
2016 TROIS C-L – Centre de Création Chorégraphique Luxembourgeois (LUX)
2016 American Realness Festival, Abrons Art Centre, New York (US)
2016 American Realness Festival,Abrons Art Centre, New York (US)
2016 American Realness Festival,Abrons Art Centre, New York (US)
2016 American Realness Festival,Abrons Art Centre, New York (US)
2015 Fierce Festival Birmingham (UK)
2015 First Friday/Corrosia Almere (NL)
2015 Wunder der Praire Festival Mannheim ( GE)
2015 OpenLucht Festival Amsterdam (NL)
2015 Spider Festival, Elektrarna, Ljubliana (SO)
2014 NWE Vorst, Moving Futures Festival, Tilburg (NL)
2014 Rotterdamse Schouwburg, Moving Futures Festival, Rotterdam (NL)
2014 Theater aan de Rijn, Moving Futures Festival, Arnhem (NL)
2014 GMDC Theatre Guangdong Dance Festival, Guangdong (CN)
2014 Kaaistudios, Working Title Platform, Brussels (BE)
2014 Lux Nijmegen, Moving Future Festival , Nijmegen (NL)
2014 Dansmakers ann t’IJ Moving Futures Festival, Amsterdam (NL)
2014 Dansmakers ann t’IJ Moving Futures Festival, Amsterdam (NL)
2014 Dansmakers ann t’IJ Moving Futures Festival, Amsterdam (NL)
2014 Arti Gallery, Forum of Live Art Amsterdam V, Amsterdam (NL)
2014 Ultima fez Studios, Residence Showing at Work Space Brussels (BE)
2014 Galeria Vermelho, VERBO, Sao Paulo (BR)
2014 Mosteiro de Sao Bento, MAP/P, Porto (PT)
SUPERNATURAL
2014 FLAM V, Arti Gallery, Amsterdam.(NL)
2013 Bouwplaats Festival, SSBA-Salon Stadschouwburg, Amsterdam.(NL)
2013 Hal T2 , Makers Intensive Program, Amsterdam.(NL)
2013 Betanienklooster, Nuit Blanche Festival, Amsterdam (NL)
IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS
2013 Casa do Povo/LOTE#2 , Sao Paulo (BR)
.WHATDOWEFINALLYSHARE.
Selected to Aerowaves priority company 2013
2013 Funarte, Festival Contemporaneo de Danca de Sao Paulo (BR)
2013 Z Zentrum für Proben und Forschung Frankfurt (GE)
2013 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (NL)
2013 Paradiso, I like to watch too Festival , Amsterdam (NL)
2012 Theater Bellevue, Punch Festival, Amsterdam (NL)
2012 Theater Bellevue, UitMarkt Festival, (NL)
2012 Dansmakers aan T’Ij, Markers Intensive Amsterdam (NL)
YOU MUST
2016 MIP3 Manisfestção Internacional de Performance, BDMG, Minas Gerais (BR)
2013 Spanski Borci Culture Centre, Spider Festival, Ljubljana (SI)
2013 Impart Theater, Mandala Performance Festival, Wroclaw (PO)
2012 FrankFurt Lab, Rough Cut Festival, Frankfurt (DE)
2012 Galeria Olido, Festival Contemporaneo de Danca, Sao Paulo (BR)
2012 Volksroom, Brussels (BE)
2012 Paradiso, I Like To Watch Too, Amsterdam (NL)
2012 Arti Gallery, Forum of live Arts in Amsterdam III (NL)
2011 Melkweg Theater, Brazil-Holland Festival, Amsterdam (NL)
THE MISERABLE THING
2016 Vertigo Festival, Varna (BG)
2012 Warehouse9, Performance Art Festival, Copenhagen (DK)
2012 WitteTheater, Ijmuiden (NL)
2012 Teatro Municipal de Almada, Festival Quinzena de Almada (PT)
2012 Teatro Barakaldo, ACT Festival, Bilbao (ES)
2011 Theater Bellevue, Punch Festival, Amsterdam (NL)
2011 Kanuti Gildi Saal, NEW/NOW Festival, Tallin (EE)
2011 Ufferhallen, Berlin (DE)
2011 Arti Gallery, Forum of Live Arts of Amsterdam II (NL)
2011 Theater Frascati, ITS Festival Awards, Amsterdam (NL)
2011 Melkweg Theater, Graduation Festival, Amsterdam( NL)
Fernando Belfiore 
