Lia Rodrigues

Lia Rodrigues is a choreographer, dancer, and one of Brazil’s most internationally acclaimed artists. Born in São Paolo, Lia Rodrigues joined the Maguy Marin company in Paris. On returning to Brazil, she founded the Lia Rodrigues Companhia de Danças in Rio de Janeiro, offering activities, dance labs, productions, classes, and rehearsals twelve months of the year. In 1992, she founded the Panorama Festival which, after she directed it for fourteen years, has become the most important of its kind in Rio de Janeiro.

Since 2004 and working with the NGO Redes de Desenvolvimento da Maré, the company has been designing educational and artistic activities for the Maré favela in Rio de Janeiro. The Centro de Artes da Maré is a result of this joint project and, in October 2011, the Escola Livre de Danças da Maré was founded. In the forty years of her professional and artistic career, Lia Rodrigues has not only been working in the area of artistic creation and practice but has also taught, organised workshops, and given seminars around the world. She believes in the synergy between the arts and social processes, combining militancy and utopias.