Cross-pollinating embodied arts, collective well-being, and activism: Caz Steele talks to MANIFESTA director Janaína Moraes

Janaína Moraes discusses MANIFESTA, a community-driven choreographic project rooted in movement, mask-making, and collective creativity. Set in Ōtautahi Christchurch, and inspired by Brazilian Carnaval, it explores identity, connection, and the joy of shared expression, through party and protest. In this episode, Janaína reflects on the therapeutic potential of participatory art, the importance of process over outcome, and the power of slowing down. Together, we consider how embodiment, play, and place-based practice can nurture agency, resilience, and new ways of being in relationship with ourselves, each other, and the world around us, using art as a tool of change. 

About Janaína Moraes

Janaína is a Brazilian dance, research and performance artist based in Ōtautahi. Working with dance improvisation since 2012, she delves into the notion of invitation poétics as a making-thinking of ways to reconfigure time and space for coexistence. Interested in relational practices and dance in other contexts, she researches art residencies as manifestations, sustaining and fostering invitations for hovering in togetherness. Founder of the art Gathering Abre Salas, she invites and collaborates cross-disciplinarily, cross-culturally, cross-abilities, cross-species, and cross-matter in the pursuit of poetics of co-dwelling. Janaína is a Doctor in Dance Studies at the Waipapa Taumata Rau (University of Auckland) and the current Artist Director at Ōtautahi Tiny Performance Festival (Tiny Fest).