Beatriz Herrera is a researcher, dance artist, and writer. She lives in Guatemala City where she developed her poetry work. As a dancer, her body practices turn around ballet, modern dance contact improvisation and yoga. She has published her research about contact improvisation, dance phenomenology, multicultural performance practices, and Guatemala’s contemporary dance scene. She is member of the coordinating team of the webinar “Multílogos: Danzas, cuerpos y movimientos”. Beatriz is currently evaluating the methodological possibilities of participatory action research and digital anti-racist pedagogies for researching traditional games as intangible cultural heritage with Caja Lúdica in Guatemala.
Natasa Chanta-Martin uses dance to approach music and she promotes intercultural dialogue through performing arts. She specialises in dance anthropology and ethnochoreology and she focuses on traditions that use the voice and the body to produce music (body music, body percussion, tap dance and more). She has participated in projects that promote inclusiveness and as a researcher of the European Network Against Racism (E.N.A.R.). Other projects towards community building and intergenerational work are: MoAM-Moving Around Music, Athens Tap Jam, Body Music Studygroup, as well as her active role at Anasa Cultural Center (GR) and International Body Music Festival (USA). Natasa collaborates with artistic groups, minority groups, schools and institutions. She is currently the Chair of the Choreomundus Alumni Association (CAA).
Maria (Masha) Kardash is performance artist and dance researcher of Ukrainian origin whose nomad lifestyle was reinforced due to the war in Ukraine. Her artisitc background is primarily in Fusion Belly Dance and includes experience in playback theater, other dance styles and different somatic practices. Her educational background is MA in Geopolitics and Political Geography and MA in Dance Anthropology.
Maria’s research interests can be divided in two big topics:
– Fusion Belly Dance history and socio-cultural aspects;
– USSR propaganda in dance and performance arts.
Currently Maria is more focused on the latter topic and working on the research project ‘Dance Politics in Socialist Countries during Early Cold War’ in the Open Society Archives in Budapest.
Originally from Kolkata, India, Kavya Iyer is a passionate dancer and artist, interested in the intersections between movement, culture, the body and society. She recently moved to Kyoto, Japan in December 2021. She currently works as a cultural researcher at the Art X Company, a strategic arts consultancy based in Mumbai while also freelancing as a teacher and choreographer in Kyoto.
Trained primarily in the Indian classical dance form of Bharatanatyam for 23 years, Kavya has also explored other genres such as Kathak, Bhangra, Salsa, Ballet, Contemporary, Kuchipudi and pretty much everything that has come her way! She is also a certified Yoga teacher and incorporates elements of her practice into her dance works. Kavya’s experiments in dance have been at the cross-section of different dance styles, in the hope to make dance more socially relevant. She envisions dance as a tool to question all things important – political, cultural, artistic, global, shared and personal. To further this, she actively participates, curates and organises festivals and symposiums to ask difficult questions about “dance” as it exists in the world today! She is the Vice Chair of the Choreomundus Alumni Association.
Temi is a culture enthusiast and creative entrepreneur (actor, voice-over artist, costume designer, and dance researcher ), She is the Creative Director at New Wine Studios with two fashion and culture short film credits; Ladipo’s Garden, August 2021 and Journey to Wholeness, December 2021. A seasoned actor for both stage and film; Eyimofe, a feature film directed by Arie and Chuko Esiri, premiered at the 70th Berlinale in Germany 2020, and Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos, a feature film funded by Sundance and Berlinale for Justice Empowerment Initiative (yet to be premiered). She is the second Nigerian actress in history to win a prize at Africa’s most prestigious film festival, the Pan African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou as the FRESPACO winner for Best Young Actor from West Africa 2021 for Eyimofe.
With 8 years of practice and experience, Temi also serves as Chief Creative Officer at Unteamed Nigeria, a craft and costuming company for stage, film, TV, music videos, and animated character costumes. Some of her other works include Gandhi, The Musical- the first-ever Nigerian-Indian musical theatre show, PoetryAh! Live, Scar and SAD pink- curated by the British council and performed live at the Lagos Theatre Festival 2016.
Presently she is an Erasmus Mundus Scholar with the Choreomundus master’s program and is esperimenting on the role of motion capture as a tool for oreserving and transmitting African intangible cultural heritage. Temi also serves as Programme Representative (PR) in the Erasmus Mundus Alumni Association (EMAA).
Pamela is a Peruvian dance artist, researcher and teacher, with a background in contemporary dance and physical theater. She holds an M.A in Choreomundus – International Master in Dance Knowledge, Practice and Heritage and a B.A in Performing Arts. Her artistic and pedagogic work has been focused on the intersections of dance and gender, producing and directing several dance projects that explored issues such as gender identity, diversity and gender violence. In 2022, she created the dance podcast SaberEsDanza, a platform for the research and dissemination of dances that highlights the diversity of dance forms within the Peruvian context. Currently, she is part of the Performing Arts Faculty at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru. Her research areas are the anthropological and ethnochoreological study of dances and the intersections between gender and performance in Latin American dance practices.
Shanny Rann is a dance anthropologist, editor, choreographer and cultural producer. Originally from Penang, Malaysia, she grounds her artistic projects in the island way of living and the celebration of cultural diversity. She brings people together through practices that bridge the body and mind, tradition and contemporary, movement and stillness. Shanny sits on the board of International Tristar Taiji Association and Operating Committee for Dance as Intangible Cultural Heritage. She continues to learn, perform and teach on the ancestral lands known as Vancouver, Canada, where she resides.
Lenin Quesada is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher from Costa Rica passionate about social impact through art. Bachelor in dramatic arts from the Universidad de Costa Rica, he has had vast experience as a performer, director and producer in multiple styles of theater, dance, Butoh and commercials for television, has experience in modeling and hosting radio and tv programs in Costa Rica. Was an assistant professor, guiding acting processes in different levels. Currently is pursuing the Choreomundus master’s in Dance Knowledge Practice and Heritage and is very interested in the relations between dance/theater, gender, sexuality and sport
Sriradha Paul is an India based performer specialised in Odissi dance for more than two decades, independent researcher, dance educator and curator. She received scholarships in dance from govt of India in the senior and junior category. She has extensively performed in prestigious platforms in India and abroad (US, UK, Sri Lanka, China, Hungary, Bhutan and South Korea) in solo and group category. She also holds a master’s degree in geography and also did her second master’s in the Choreomundus programme. She has an experience in Indian contemporary dance and performative storytelling. She has conducted dance and performative storytelling workshops in several schools and colleges. She delivered a short lecture-demonstration to the inmates at Cherlapally jail, Hyderabad. She also worked closely with the survivors of human trafficking under the American Centre’s performative storytelling project in Kolkata. She has successfully curated several national and international festivals. Her recent interests are temple sculptures and the ancient architectural pattern and the journey from freezing bodies to moving. She is also curating an exhibition on the classical dances of India in London.
Recently she received an Indo-Pacific grant from US Consulate and will be heading the project and working with two Indonesian artists.
María is a performer, creator and researcher in dance and theatre. Born in Bolivia, she was formed in ballet, jazz, folkloric dances and holds a degree in modern and contemporary dance. Bachelor in performing arts and social sciences aswell as Choreomunudus Master. The corpus of her works reveal three constants: Migration as a process ad infinitum, the mutual cannibalization between origin and novelty, and the attempt to translate the unnameable. María´s search lays in the liminal space between the natural and the cultural, combining the techniques and knowledge that she has acquired over the years. Currently María makes part of the 1st cohort of the Master in Mulitmedia and New Technologies for the Performing Arts, in LABA Valencia & La fura dels Baus, besides her artistic practice charaterized by the multicultural transdiscipline.
Sumedha Bhattacharyya is an India-based interdisciplinary dance artist, researcher, educator, dance filmmaker and a primary caregiver, curios about expanding the potential of camera, traditional dance, mythology and gender. Her practice is thus formulated in a quest to understand what happens in the in-betweens, in the happening, unfolding of a choreographic process. She is currently pursuing her doctoral studies in Spatial Arts at Jindal School of Art and Architecture, with a research focus on understanding the relationship between the woman and the machine (camera)interests including surveillance, memory, space and spectatorship. She is also the founder of her initiative of evolving research-creation lab Duet with Camera and a member of a collective space in New Delhi, Khuli Khirkee.
Bryan is an assistant professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman and handles theatre and performance studies courses both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. A theatre practitioner, he has participated in creative projects as managing director, production and stage manager, dramaturg, and Noh performer. He has written essays and book chapters about dance ritual, cultural performance, protest theatre in the Philippines, and performance archive. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, he researches on ethnochoreology or anthropology of dance and critical heritage studies. His current research focuses on commemoration and performance of collective memories of the Filipino-American War in Marinduque island, Philippines. Viray is currently pursuing a PhD at the Australian National University.
Paramita is a performer, curator, and arts manager working out of Kolkata. Co-Director of Artsforward for the last 12 years. Paramita works with artists and the creative community to build moving messages for social change. She is deeply engaged in the field of environment, audience development for the arts, nurturing and supporting creativity, capacity building and artistic ability in the youth, curating, and designing creative art projects.
Movement artist, researcher and multimedia creator. His artistic works focuses on the body and its multimedia potential, working as a director, screenwriter, editor, dancer and choreographer. His work emphasizes the genres of dancefilm, documentary and expanded video.
Finding photography in Paris, Arie honed his craft before returning to England where he worked in the camera departments of several projects ranging from Audi to Vivienne Westwood and the BBC. In the work of Vittorio De Sica, Arie found a form of storytelling that could give voice to the long-neglected tales of the average Nigerian.
He has a Master’s of Fine Arts from Columbia University in New York. While there he continued to collaborate with his brother Chuko, co-directing their short Goose, which played at the 2017 LA Film Festival and producing Besida, an official selection at the 2018 Berlin Film Festival. He also produced Chika Anadu’s AMAA and AFI Fest award winning feature B for Boy.
His work as a director has been featured on Vogue and Essence.com. He is an IFP Narrative Lab Fellow who currently divides his time between Lagos and New York. His debut feature film Eyimofe premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2020 and was released theatrically in Nigeria, Benelux and North America where it was inducted into the Criterion Collection.
Anna Alexandre is a producer, artistic director and author. She runs DAN.CIN.LAB, an artistic platform dedicated to projects crossing dance and image around societal issues. Anna is also leader of mAPs – migrating Artists Project, a groundbreaking process created with DAN.CIN.LAB, Coorpi, Tanzrauschen, Malakta and MØZ, around a short-film collection about POWER with the support of Creative Europe released in 2022. She launches the same year the first international production company dedicated to societal dance film and innovative contents, DAN.CIN.FILMS, based in Pôle Pixel, the French cluster for cultural and creative industries. She co-signs in 2019 with Anthony Faye the creative documentary “Moving Bodies” about young disabled dancers, and shoots “Reed” in 2020, a physical journey through three migration intimate stories.
