Ciane Fernandes is a full professor of the School of Theater at the Federal University of Bahia and one of the founders of the corresponding Graduate Program in Performing Arts. With degrees in nursing and visual arts, she specialized in mental health (art therapy) from the University of Brasília. She holds an MA and a PhD in Arts & Humanities for Performing Arts Interpreters at New York University and is a Movement Analyst from Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies (New York), where she is an Associate Researcher. She carried her postdoctoral studies in Contemporary Communication and Culture at UFBA. Professor Fernandes is the founder, director and performer of the UFBA A-FETO Dance-Theater Collective since its foundation in 1997 and has performed in several cities in Brazil and abroad, both in shows and performances, as well as in lectures and debates, workshops or in hybrid formats of demonstrative activities and performative conferences. She published some books including Pina Bausch and the Wuppertal Dance Theater: The Aesthetics of Repetition and Transformation and The Moving Researcher: Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis in Performing Arts Education and Creative Arts Therapies. The first book is already in its third edition in the US and Europe, and the second was recently published in England, in updated and expanded edition. The author has also received several national and international awards and scholarships. Her most recent research project addresses the relationship between the performing arts and the environment in somatic-performative immersions that integrate teaching and creation in an expanded field. This is one of the themes of her new book Dança Cristal: Da Arte do Movimento à Abordagem Somático-Performativa (Crystal Dance: from the art of movement to a somatic-performative approach), published by EDUFBA.
