Vera Mantero, choreographer, dancer, performer and singer, is one of the most influential figures of portuguese dance in the 90s and 2000s. She studied classical dance and worked in the Ballet Gulbenkian in Lisbon. In 1987 she started creating her own choreography, showing her work in theatres and festivals in Europe, Brazil, USA, Canada and Singapore. Among her choreographic work she points out her solos Perhaps she could dance first and think afterwards (1991), Olympia (1993) and one mysterious Thing, said e.e.cummings* (1996), What can be said about Pierre (2011), and her group pieces Under (1993), For Boring and Profound Sadnesses (1994), Poetry and Savagery (1998), Until the moment when God is destroyed by the extreme exercise of beauty (2006), We are going to miss everything we don’t need (2009), and more recently The Caldeirão highlanders, exercises in fictional anthropology (2012) and Maximum Wage (2014). In 2013 and 2014 she created the performance-installations Shadows on offer and More for Less than for More, the latter one in partnership with Culturgest and Maria Matos Municipal Theatre.Vera Mantero participates regularly in international improvisation projects alongside improvisers and choreographers as Lisa Nelson, Mark Tompkins, Meg Stuart and Steve Paxton. Since the year 2000 Vera Mantero is dedicating herself also to vocal work by singing the repertoire of several authors and co-creating experimental music projects. In 1999 the Theatre Culturgest in Lisbon organized one month retrospective of her work entitled Month of March, Month of Vera. She represented Portugal at the 26th Biennial of São Paulo 2004 with Eating your heart out, a work created in collaboration with the sculptor Rui Chafes. In 2002 Vera Mantero was awarded the Almada Prize (IPAE/Ministry of Culture) and in 2009 the prestigious Gulbenkian Art Prize for her career as a performer and choreographer.

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