Cora Laszlo

Cora Laszlo is a Brazilian dance-maker, choreographer, teacher, and author. She holds a BA in Dance and a Licentiate degree in Dance. Teaching from UNICAMP (Brazil), a specialization degree in Klauss Vianna Technique from PUC-SP (Brazil), and is currently pursuing a MA in Performance Studies at NYU. Cora has been based in New York since 2018, where she created her most recent dance solo, "December 32", performed at the Movement Research at the Judson Church, Open Performance, and SESC (Brazil). She is currently a LEIMAY Arts in the Community Garden Commissioned Fellow. Cora has been the recipient of several Brazilian grants for dance and has also established partnerships with artists from different media and nationalities. Cora is a Klauss Vianna Technique specialist—a Brazilian dance and somatic education technique. In 2018, she published a peer-reviewed book on teaching the Klauss Vianna Technique for teenagers, titled "Outros Caminhos de Dança: Técnica Klauss Vianna para Adolescentes e para Adolescer."

Title of Project

The Action of Presence

Description of Project

This presentation addresses the uses of presence and attention as worked in the Klauss Vianna Technique (KVT), a Brazilian contemporary dance and somatic education approach. I will introduce the KVT and claim that its proposition of presence is an action that reverberates into other actions. I will analyze possible consequences to dance practices and studies— as well as to everyday life movements. I argue that by reconfiguring the presence (and the present) as an ongoing and collective practice that happens in the process of questions and transformations, KVT allows us to disentangle enclosed and crystalized notions of the past (even of its own), and it can eventually reorient futures. By discussing the action of presence in the KVT, this presentation also attempts to expand the presence of this technique, which is still largely unknown outside of Brazil.

Project Inspiration

When I started the MA in Performance Studies, I had the chance to get in touch with a vast realm of theories and practices that expanded how I understood the Klauss Vianna Technique (KVT), a technique I have decades-long experience as an artist, teacher, and scholar. In my project, then, I discuss the action of presence by establishing a conversation between Performance Studies and the KVT studies.

Areas of Academic Interest

Klauss Vianna Technique, Dance Studies, Performance Studies