PACAP #08

Ana (An): they/them/she/her – Born in 2000 in Silesia. Dance hostess, performer, choreographer, Reiki II healer, fuck the system sorcerer. Explores the possibilities of learning for oneself and others through dance and seeks methods of anonymization. Anonymous, meaning collective, rejects authorship and ownership of spoken and embodied content. By constructing queer personas in performance, engages in dialogue with them and learns from them, often allowing artistic practices to drift into entropy and explore the limits of control (raising questions about safety and consent).

António Bollaño was born in 1998. He studied in the theatre school Escola Profissional de Teatro de Cascais and the dance and theatre school FOR Dance Theatre. He finished his degree in Acting in Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema. As an actor and dancer worked with Bestiário, Olga Roriz, Nuno Carinhas, Pedro Ramos, Sara Carinhas, Carlos Avilez among others.

Arash Khakpour (آرش خاکپور) is a dancer and choreographer from Tehran and is privileged to be a dance artist based in the Coast Salish Territory (Vancouver, Canada). Arash has been practicing dance and performance for the past 15 years and has been a company member of the EDAM Contact Improvisation ensemble since 2017. He tends to invest in the nuances of prejudices in the body as a way of inviting the unconscious to the conscious, and as a doorway to confront unknown emotions. He sees dance as a process of physical, emotional and spiritual discovery and a mode of transformation.

Emily da Silva is a Brazilian dancer and performer living in Lisbon. As a freelance artist, she collaborates with different artists and projects. She is interested in the idea of circularity – between tornadoes, whirlpools, black holes, somersaults and gyrations – exploring movements that destabilize, turn, reinvent the body and transfrom space.

Guillermo Tarasewicz: Hartist, scenic/live. He is interested in the themes of popular culture and mass culture. His works are woven between dance, contemporary theater, and performance studies. He studied dance, social anthropology, and physical education. Based on this knowledge, he has created more than 15 pieces and developed some practices such as: ‘Danza tropical uruguaya’ and ‘Corporalidad Expandida’.

Isabela Rossi (BR) moves between dance, performance and creation. Trained in contemporary dance at RCPD Mariemma (Madrid, 2016), she has worked as a performer with various choreographers in Spain. In 2020, she received the AISGE Award for Outstanding Dancer for the piece LINGUA, by Natalia Fernandes. As a creator, she investigates the relationship between the wandering body, space and temporality. Since 2021, she has collaborated with Miguel Glez. on works such as Proceso de acomodación, awarded at the 34th CCM 

iSaAc iSaBeL Espinoza Hidrobo is an Ecuadorian choreographer, trans artist-activist and violinist based in Europe. Their Works engages with trans-feminist anti-colonialism and ritualism, exploring transdisciplinary constellations of participatory composition. As a mestizo of Spanish/Kichwa/Cañari ancestry, iSSiE currently fosters “SHELTER” a transatlantic social-artistic research project in collaboration with Kichwa indigenous communities of the Andes, cultivating movement for socio-ecological justice. They is the artistic director and founder of maiskind, a queer artistic community in Cologne and member of the Yachay Wasi – Quito, INTERFEMME* and SOFRA Queer Migrants communities.

Julia Kosałka is a dance artist born in Kraków, Poland. She studied contemporary dance in Austria and Belgium, graduating from Conservatoire of Antwerp. She has worked in Germany with Iván Pérez at Dance Theatre Heidelberg and Alina Belyagina. She also collaborated with choreographers such as Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe, Claire Croizé, Inãki Azpillaga, Renan Martins, Ben Fury, and Agostina D’Alessandro.

Her practices are rooted in improvisation and real-time composition.

Kaya: I was born in Brussels to a portuguese mother and united-staten father 25 years ago. My parents are performing artsts and have been transmitng their interest and passion for art in many of its forms to me ever since I was born. I started to play classical piano around 6 and then discovered Fado and clarinet which deconstructed my very formal view of music. My practice then became more experimental as I played with different bands revolving around contemporary and ambient electronic music as well as an interest for jazz. During these researches I also studied at La Cambre in Brussels, contemporary bookbinding, and have been experimenting with ceramics, textles crafs, baking and fashion as some of my main passions.

María Ibarretxe del Val. Visual and performing artist. The body, voice and participation are central in her work. She is part of the collective Sra. Polaroiska with Alaitz Arenzana. Collaboration drives her practice, often working with other artists and in diverse socio-cultural contexts such as Japan, South Korea, Mexico, or Kurdistan, where she nourishes, learns, and constantly questions herself.

Martha Kotsia (1996) is a multidisciplinary artist and activist based in Athens, Greece, born as a migrant in Malmö, Sweden. Reflecting on a “post”-colonial society and her childhood traumas her art varies between choreography, performance art, video, light design and poetry. After moving to Brussels to practice contemporary dance in her early adult years, she returned to Athens for architecture studies (National Technical University of Athens) as well as to later on attend the Academy of Choreography U(r)topias (Elefsina, Greece). While trying to contribute to re-wildness she’s publishing a research on Savage, Landscape and Walking.

Michiru Shin (she/they) is a dance artist from Tokyo. Holds a BA in Visual Communication from Brighton University, UK. As a performer, she has collaborated with Bosmat Nossan, Lilach Pnina Livne, and Yasmeen Godder, among others. Her personal project, “Abstracted Bodies” incorporates dance movement, hand-poked tattoos of her abstract drawings, and Ilan Lev method treatment involving voice and touch. The project offers tools for deconstructing our images, gender, and social and political roles, suggesting the way to become abstract-shaped entities.

Natacha Campos, the daughter of Angolan parents born in the late 1990s, has worked in the languages of dance, theater and performance. Her research focuses on the confrontation between the visible and the invisible, the intimate and the public, in an attempt to find the common denominators in the apparently antagonistic.

Raul Aranha: I was born and raised in India, and moved to Europe in 2018. I like a lot of things from dancing to cooking to sciences and philosophy.

Salomé Pham-Van-Hué. It is about living in this world, in the most living way possible. Through experimentation, I’m finding a path. Dance field represents for me a dreamed space of exploration ; and it should remain that way. I encountered it only a few years ago, after meandering in different fields. Since then, I had the chance to learn and transform near great people, as a student, as an interpreter in various projects but also with friends inventing ways of living and moving in daily life. For the next few years, I would like to pursue this research. It is about playing with, redefining, blurring edges to open interstices of freedom, expression and struggle.

Sepideh Khodarahmi is an artist working in dance and theatre whose work explores the tensions between pleasure and disgust, construction and destruction. Combining rhythm-based movement, club dance, and hyper-gendered drag, Sepideh Khodarahmi creates visceral and boundary-pushing performances that explore self-objectification, power dynamics, and absurdity.

They hold a BA in Acting from University of Gothenburg aswell as studied at the Department of Mathematics at Stockholm University, Broadway Dance Center, and Mime at Amsterdam Academy of Theatre and Dance.

Śomi is an artist, sound poet and witch. Inspired by the surrealists and fascinated by psychogeography, she translates dreams into wa(l)king language. She connects with spirits and non-human creatures  through visions and various embodiment practices.

Therese Bendjus is a performance maker and dancer originally from Dresden, Germany. After having traded her medical studies for an education in dance, she graduated from the BA Dance, Context, Choreography at HZT Berlin and was a fellow of Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. In her works she challenges the measurable/diagnosable in order to access spaces of uncertainty and vagueness – building multi-sensorial spaces, that encourage people to be vulnerable, intimate and brave with one another and themselves.

As performer she worked a.o. with choreographers and theatre directors such as Kirill Savchenkov, Magdalena Weniger, Asya Ashman, Constanza Macras and Rolando Villazón.

Tiago Vieira: A graduate of the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema, he completed his training in various theater, dance and performance workshops, including Teatro Praga, Olga Mesa, Vera Mantero, Susana Vidal, Miguel Moreira, Meg Stuart, Marlene Freitas, Joana Craveiro, Amália Bentes, Vitor Roriz and Sofia Dias, Francisco Camacho. He has worked with Mónica Calle, Miguel Moreira, Vera Mantero, Carlota Lagido, Ana Borralho and João Galante, Ana Ribeiro, Rui Catalão, Miguel Bonneville, Ricci/forte, BLITZ THEATREGROUP (Greece), Vânia Rovisco, Mónica Garnel, Catarina Vieira, Teatro Praga.