How can we move with a Baroque sensibility? What happens when we approach elaboration as a method for improvisation and choreographic creation? In this workshop, Thomas F. DeFrantz proposes experimenting with Baroque elaboration as a way of moving and developing movement material for choreography. The notions of surface and ersatz—understood here as fake or artificial movement—will serve as starting points for exploring gestures, their transformations, and their compositional possibilities. The workshop will be experimental: the facilitator offers no ready-made answers, but proposes ways to investigate these questions through movement. Thinking with The Society of the Spectacle and Poetics of Relation, participants are invited to explore the aesthetic and political implications of artifice and surface, bringing movement practice, improvisation, and reflection into dialogue.

Date: 13, 14 October 2026

Venue: Forum Dança, Travessa do Calado 26B, 1170-070 Lisboa

Organization: Gisela Dória, Maíra Santos & Gustavo Vicente