Our Company.

Mari Paula

Mari Paula (Brazil, 1984), a Portuguese citizen based in Spain, is a choreographer, dancer and cultural manager. Her practice unfolds at the crossroads of dance, performance, research and context-building, shaped by her experience between Brazil and Europe.

Trained in classical and contemporary dance at the São Paulo Conservatory and the Paula Firetti School (São Paulo), in acting at UNESPAR, with a master’s degree in Hybrid Arts and Art Criticism from UTFPR and a master’s degree in Latin American Cultural Studies and Cultural Management from the University of Granada, she develops an artistic practice where creation, research and context meet.

Her professional career began in Brazil, where she worked as a performer and creator with Balé Teatro Guaíra, Casa Selvática and Corpo de Baile Jovem de São Paulo, among other companies and projects. In 2017 she founded her own company in Spain, Mari Paula Dance & Performance. Since then she has developed her own artistic practice and also works as a choreographer for other companies and projects, extending her research to different contexts and stage languages.

Her work has been presented in Europe, North America, Central America, South America and Africa, in theatres, festivals, creation centres, universities and international platforms. Her track record includes Teatros del Canal, CondeDuque, Dansa Metropolitana, Palacio de Festivales de Cantabria, Centro Botín, Graner, Centro Huarte, La Caldera, Teatro Pradillo, Carme Teatre, Centro NAVE, Teatro Leal, Festival CulturaUNAM, DFERIA, Tanzmesse, Bienal Kinani, FIDE and Cena Cumplicidades, among others.

Alongside her creative work, she has built a career in research, training and context-building for dance. She is director of LAS VIVAS – Ibero-American Dance Platform, through which she promotes networks of collaboration and cooperation between artists, institutions and territories across Ibero-America. She has also taken part in organising and representing the dance sector in Spain, and develops research and training projects in dialogue with universities and centres of thought in Europe and Latin America.

Her practice has been supported by institutions and programmes such as IBERESCENA, FUNARTE, the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, AECID, Culture Moves Europe, the Government of Cantabria and the Spanish Ministry of Culture, among others. Her processes have also led to publications, academic research and spaces for reflection in Spain, Brazil and the United States.

An artist who, over a decade, has built a practice in which body, experience, territory and research transform one another.

Our Methodology.

The body as matter of transformation

Since 2015, Mari Paula has been developing a long-term artistic research on the body as sensitive and political matter, constantly transformed through its relationship with the world.

Her research starts from Brazilian cultural anthropophagy and from an initial question: what happens when the body devours, digests, transforms and gives back what it receives. This logic becomes a way of creating that runs through her experience as a Brazilian migrant woman, making the body a territory where cultures, memories, experiences and references come into contact and are transformed. This research gave rise to Retrópica, awarded the Funarte – Klauss Vianna National Dance Prize and performed for years in Europe, Africa and Latin America.

The research keeps developing through the works themselves. In Devórate (2019), co-produced within IBERESCENA, Mari Paula delves into the relationship between body, matter, technology and ecology together with Janet Novás. In Fronterizas (2022), the body moves towards the experience of migration, memory and resistance, in collaboration with Luz Arcas. The piece earned Mari Paula a nomination for Best Performer at the Max Awards.

Through these processes, the research evolves from a logic of devouring, digesting and transforming towards an increasingly sensory relationship with what passes through the body: receiving, filtering, listening, transforming and giving back. The body gradually opens up to territory, matter, technology, nature and other forms of life.

Today this research takes shape in Los Orificios, a practice that understands the body’s own channels as spaces of connection and exchange with the world. Eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin, anus and vagina are conceived as spaces of entry and exit, where perception, memory, pleasure, strength and agency meet whatever surrounds the body.

From a feminist perspective, women’s bodies hold a central place as spaces of experience, desire, memory, power and creation. In this research, the pelvis and the feet act as choreographic anchors, connecting perception, weight, impulse and presence. The pelvis takes on a particular dimension as a space of pleasure, strength, creativity and agency, especially when working with bodies with a uterus and vagina.

Los Orificios is today a methodology developed and tested by Mari Paula both in her practice as a choreographer and in her training and mediation processes, with performing arts professionals and people with no previous dance experience. It is a practice already experienced by hundreds of people in creation, mediation and training processes.

An evolving methodology

01 Anthropophagic Body · 2015–2018

Devour · digest · transform. The body takes in and transforms experiences, cultures, references and materials.

02 Body-Filter · 2019–2022

Receive · filter · give back. The body becomes an active filter through movement, breath, voice and perception, in relation to territory, technology and nature.

03 Los Orificios · 2022–present

Perceive · open · connect · express. The body as a permeable surface. The senses, the orifices and especially the pelvis and the body’s centre become spaces of perception, desire, memory, creativity and agency.

Twelve years of a vital research

Mari Paula’s career can be read as a single research in transformation.

Anthropophagy, feminism, migration, memory, territory, desire, death, technology and nature do not appear as separate themes, but as materials that the body takes in, passes through and transforms.

Thus Retrópica, Devórate, Fronterizas, Lake Machine, Bammm, Dúo, Al Relente and Cuerpografías are not separate episodes, but different ways in which this research becomes visible: in the relationship between cultures, in the female body, in the migrant experience, in territory, in memory, in intimacy and in the ways of relating to other bodies and other environments.

Today the research keeps widening the notion of the body towards territory, sound, nature, technology and other forms of life, as in Por el capricho de oírles, currently in creation and due to premiere in 2027, marking the company’s tenth anniversary.

Mari Paula does not use the body to represent an idea. She uses the body to produce it.

Awards and recognitions

Funarte – Klauss Vianna National Dance Prize · Brazil · Retrópica
Nominated for Best Performer at the Max Awards · Fronterizas
Nominated for Best Direction and Best Show · Troféu Gralha Azul · Curitiba, Brazil
Artistic director · LAS VIVAS – Ibero-American Dance Platform
President (2019–2023) · Movimiento en Red – Association of Dance Professionals of Cantabria
Vice-president (2023–2024) · FECED – Spanish Federation of Dance Companies and Businesses
Secretary (2018–2020) · Dance Sector Board of the Cantabrian Council of Culture