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Alvin Yong Kin Hoe, born in 1993, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
A Malaysian circus artist based in Porto, Portugal. Starting off his journey with the dream of traveling around the world as a Diabolo performer, this ambition leads him to become a street performer in Taiwan. Nevertheless, the desire of being a great performer pushes him to pick up a new speciality, the Cyr Wheel, which is the apparatus that expanded his world and grew his curiosity in contemporary circus. For this reason, he entered the circus world by studying in INAC, a circus school in Portugal, and graduated from two years of professional training. Since then, Alvin had embodied circus arts in his life, challenging his capacity and capability as an artist, exploring the artistic world with his body and two apparatus.
Ana Nácher is a 20 years old Spanish Valencian dancer and performer. She gratuated in contemporary dance in the "Conservatorio Profesional de danza de Valencia" in 2020. Then, she studied physical education for two years.
She worked in Toulouse (France) with Rebish company for an Erasmus Plus programme. She collaborated with "Valencia with the Beatles", dancing in the show for two consecutive years. She worked with the MOPA company, to finally take part in the show "Error" in 2019. She took part in the Robert Gomez' show "La Plataforma" in 2020.
She also worked in some musical video clips for several artists and she danced as an animator in parties organized by RDMusic in Valencia.
For Ana, working with respect and sharing a good and positive energy are the most important basis for a constructive work.
This is Anna. She is 22 years old and from Germany. She always loved to move and to do sports. When she was 15, she started breaking (breakdance), training with the Dancefloor Destruction Crew (DDC) in Schweinfurt. Soon she fell in love with it and could not stop practicing.
Having wanted to dance full-time after finishing high school already, she nevertheless decided to study sustainability first. She promised herself to focus on dance afterward, should that still be her desire. This meant that studying in The Hague, Netherlands gave her time and space to orient herself in terms of what she wanted regarding dance. She kept breaking, training with the Heavy Hitters crew, however, she was drawn to other styles of dance, simultaneously.
Therefore, she entered the Crosstown Production group, a dance creation and show group at Korzo theatre, The Hague. In this process, she was introduced to contemporary dance, basic ballet, whacking, and Turkish folk dances. The choreographic approach of Rutkay Özpinar hereby especially influenced her artistic developments, by showcasing the deep connection between the performers, their identity, and the meaning that can hereby be transmitted to the audience.
Through the acting course “Acting with Archetypes” which she did together with a dance course focusing on indigenous knowledge in dance during her exchange in California, she furthered her interest in being a performer, making use of all qualities and skills of body and mind. Her desire to dig deeper into that finally brought her to Oficina Zero, which she loves and fully embraces up to this moment.
Angie Sarigeorgiou was born in Athens, Greece. She considers herself as an artist and a dancer, taking dance classes since she was eight years old.
She graduated National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Philosophy, Pedagogy and Psychology department in 2018, with main domain of research in special education. After, she entered in Professional Dance School "Aktina", from which she graduated with distinction in 2021.
She has been taking part in art festivals as a performer. During those years she is also working as a dance teacher and pilates instructor in Athens.
Currently based in Porto, Portugal, taking part in Oficina Zero, one-year intensive program.
Annamaria Karounou was born in Athens, Greece in 1998. She has studied Business Administration at the Athens University of Economics and Business.
She graduated from the Higher Professional Dance school Aktina in October 2021.
During the 3 years of study she performed multiple times with her colleagues, at their own works and in collaboration with the teachers.
In the context of the 27th Kalamata Dance Festival in July 2021 and in collaboration with her professional dance school, presented her own solo entitled «organizing pessimism» at the main square.
In addition, she participated in the dance piece "Molohma" presented at the Lycabettus Festival in May 2021 as well as at Athens Video Dance Project (AVDP) in December 2021.
She has attended dance seminars with Natalia Gabrielczyk, Jos Baker, Jozef Fruček, Linda Kapetanea, Akira Yoshida, Chey Jurado, Lívia Balážová, Stella Zanou, Jurij Konjar, Adila Omotosho.
She is currently enrolled in Oficina Zero 22/23 program.
Anthie Stasinou was born in Athens, Greece in 1996. She has graduated from the department of ' Programming & Technology ' in Athens Univeristy of Economics and Business in 2022 and also she has graduated from the Higher Professional School of Dance ' Aktina ' in October of 2021.
As an artist, she has participated in an interactive dance program of Tedx Aueb in March of 2018 and she has choreographed and performed the solo 'a station in a path of a certain bus' in the festival of Athens Video Dance Project (AVDP) in January, 2020. In addition, she has choreographed the piece 'Moloima' which was performed in Lycabettus Festival in May of 2021 and in the festival of Athens Video Dance Program (AVDP) in December of 2021.
She has attended dance seminars with Natalia Gabrielczyk, Linda Kapetanea, Suka Horn, Betty Dramisioti, Nikos Kalogerakis, Kiki Baka, Eva Georgitsopoulou, Adonis Tzoumas, Sandra Grimma, Maria Fountouli etc.
My name is Antón, I’m 24 years old and I’m from Galiza. After dancing for so many years as an amateur dancer, passing through so many styles as Jazz-Funk, Jazz and Ballet, I decided to start my path on contemporary dance when I was studying my Bachelor Degree in Philosophy. Specially last year, when I was in Madrid, I had the opportunity to know the work done in spaces of training as Descalzinha, but in a most specific way I studied in profundity the artistic work of Poliana Lima, which has been a big influence in my understanding of the body of (my) dance, the improvisation, and a singular notion of what technique can be. Through her work I started to recognise the dance as desire —the way a dance which is focused on what is happening actually permits everything within it. This year in Oficina Zero is the first one of my experience in a professional programme in dance, so it's also the first one of acknowledging what it's like to be(come) a professional dancer. I would really like to focus on that as a work in progress: accepting, precisely, the work of becoming as the work of the dance itself —or at least, as I understand it, and also as I would like to understand it.
I also have been studying the possibilities of my body quality and expression through circus disciplines, such as acrobacy, but in a most important way through contortionism, specially through the training of Ane Miren, which has given to me a deep awareness of the movement of my spine and its connection with the whole body.
That's why I’m really enthusiastic for this moment and for what it’s coming next in this programme full of surprises: my interest coincides with the purpose of a dance that permits to surprise itself, so let's work to be open to that happening.
Carol Lamoglia is a circus performer and dancer who graduated from Salto International Circus School in the year 2021 with a specialty in Chinese pole. Currently she is more dedicated to hulla hoops and hair-hanging training. For the last year she has been part of the ballroom community in Portugal competing in New Way which is one of the vogue dance styles and within ballroom she also competes in a category called Sex Siren which is about Sex Appeal. In addition when younger she studied theater and is a lover of writing.
Fanny’s interests have greatly been by influenced by her travel’s experiences around the world. Through these journeys, she has been inspired by the diversity of life’s forms which brought her an insatiable curiosity practices and theories. This curiosity leads her to explore academical insights through a political and anthropological career in Brussels (ULB) and Madrid (Universidad Complutense de Madrid).
Struggling finding coherence between theorical and practical insights, she had to keep on been active in different political and social movements. She has been leaving in different kinds of collective’s habitat and invested in different social, environmental and feminist movements. Arts in many forms have also taken a great part of her life: from playing music to theatre and dance. Her dance interest have mostly been around improvisation, contact dance. She was always really interested in the social sight of dance which led her to organize some music and dance improvisations sessions.
Through her thesis, she researches the more political, sociological, anthropological and philosophical aspects of dance, by being part and investigating this dance and music’s improvisation movement taking place in Brussels’s public spaces. She also developed a great interest in philosophy, which she could put in practice through her work in giving education workshops through an association in Brussels. She dreams about being able to combine her passions and interests: to dedicate herself to some embodied practice, with keeping a foot in the intellectual social and political’s world.
My name is Inês Sengo Chaves Guerra, I am nineteenth years old and I am Portuguese, from Porto.
My contact with dance started when I was really young by attending some hip-hop classes near my house, in Maia, and also did ballroom dance for two years. Since then, I frequented three different dance academies, always doing more of hip-hop basic classes and a little bit of commercial contemporary classes. In 2017, when I decided to take dance more seriously but still as an hobby, I entered an Hip-Hop crew, and there I had a more specific contact with urban styles, mostly locking, popping and house and also had urban contemporary. In this group I got more experience about performances and competitions, and also got a more clarified vision of what dance was and how much importance it had in my life.
So, after studying in regular school for one year I decided that I actually wanted to study dance and maybe take it seriously, not just an hobby anymore but as a professional career option, and therefor I auditioned for Balleteatro- Professional Dance and Theatre school of Porto and I got in, in the dance course, in 2019 until 2022. Balleteatro offered both ways of education, theoric and pratical classes, giving equivalence to high school studies aswell. There I got to work with many different portuguese choreographers and dancers, as I had different classes with distinct teachers and also had the opportunity to be part of three to four projects each year and perform them aswell in different theatres.
In Balleteatro I studied contemporary and ballet, having classes of technical work, improvisation, small compositions, cunningham technique, and also partnering work, consequently modifing my point of view and the knowledge of myself as a dancer, that is why I switched my focus from urban dance to contemporary.
Some of the projects/ performances that I was part of: “Quando se dança diz-se a verdade” by Elizabete Magalhães, September 2020, Coliseu do Porto; “Hodiernidades” by Flávio Rodrigues, 2020, Coliseu do Porto;
“Hodiernidades- Sengundo Ato” by Flávio Rodrigues, 2021, Bienal da Ardósia de Valongo; “Sem Título” by Luís Guerra, May 2021, Coliseu do Porto; Co-creation of a performance with a classmate within the scope of Projections Programme- Cicle of Performances- Emerging Artists, which we called “Connection of bodies” by Inês Guerra e Eduarda Cunha, May 2021, Coliseu do Porto; “Ecstasy” by Beatriz Valentim, September 2021, Coliseu do Porto; Member of the colection of artists that integrated the Christmas Circus of Porto, December 2021- January 2022, Coliseu do Porto; “Bestiário Cinético” by Jorge Gonçalves, March 2022, Teatro Helena Sá e Costa; “Trajeto.Corpo.Espaço” by Carlos Silva, July 2022, Lamego.
At the end of my course I did my own creation for final evaluation, which I named “Unknown Spaces” and performed in July of 2022 in Teatro Carlos Alberto.
During all this time I decided that I really wanted to persue my passion and be a professional dancer and choreographer in the future, and for that reason I auditioned for dance schools out of Portugal where I had unsuccessful results in the beginning of the year of 2022 and by that I chose to do the Oficina Zero Training and Researching Programme of 2022/2023, in order to improve myself and grow as an artist and also as a person and keep on pursuing my main goal.
Curious fact: I was also a Javeline thrower in athletics for nine years, since 2013 till 2022, ending that chapter in August of this year.
Joséphine is a French-Portuguese musical and movement artist. She has special interest in the distorted and disarticulated bodies and she is currently creating a performance using sound, voice and dance.
Under the name of Saeira, she has also been creating a contrasting music between light and shadow for more than 3 years. Through her crystalline voice and harsh electronic sounds, she transports us into a dark and enigmatic universe. Whether in French or Portuguese, her lyrics approach the body and exacerbate the senses to form a singular and disconcerting poetry.
Kosma Bresson is a 26 years old Franco-Russian dancer, performer, musician and writer. He worked as an addiction psychologist in Brussels where he began to develop "artistic encounters" between patients, workers and artists. Make people and arts meet, talk , confront is his main field of research, juggling with tools from psychology, music, writing, drawing and moving. He uses emotions as a main ingredient, encounters as spices, research as a plate to cook magic without recipe.
Leonardo Gaipa (Italy, 26.06.1994) was born in Milano. He doesn’t know much about fashion though.
Since his teenage years he wrote hundreds of poems and never published any. At 14 he saw his sister in a high school’s theatre show named “A come Amore”. He was touched by the way theatre spoke about that love he still never met. He couldn’t imagine how far that love would bring him.
During the teenage years he founded two rock bands in which he played as guitarist. At 16 he already knew that it would be hard (but enriching) to be musician, writer and actor at the same time. Some things never change.
After failing the auditions in theatre academies and after a catastrophic love story in the Netherlands, he moved back to Milan and decided to have a normal life: quit theatre, study in university and work as a waiter. It didn’t last long.
In 2016 he got addicted to theatre again and started attending evening classes at Teatro della Contraddizione, a small experimental theatre company in Milan. In 2019 he gained his bachelor in Modern Literature and started to grow an interest in dance thanks to Maria Carpaneto, teacher of Presence-Mobilité-Danse. During these years he also wrote a dramaturgy piece about the end of the world, founded a creative writing collective, travelled all Europe busking/hitchhiking and spent many hours walking his dogs regardless of the weather.
In 2020 he cut his hair after six years and decided to try the audition for a theatre academy again. Surprisingly, it worked.
During the first year bachelor of Physical Theatre at Accademia Teatro Dimitri (Switzerland) he won two scholarships, founded a street art trio of magic/music/juggling (Trio Butterfly) and created three short movies (director: Stina Werenfels) that were selected for Expo Dubaj 2022. In September 2021 he went to Erasmus in Czech Republic (Brno, atelier of Physical Theatre directed by Pierre Nadaud at Janacek Academy Muzicki Umeni) to study clown, puppets and multimedia. In 2022 he started a creation (as performer) with the Czech dance company PocketArt and the choreographers Jaro Vinarsky and Lucia Kasiarova. The show (“Bodies Together”) premiered in the dance theatre Ponec last December and it is currently playing.
Leonardo Gaipa, as you might have guessed, is currently enrolled in Oficina Zero and based in Porto.
My name is Marian. I am a 20 year old Spanish girl.
Since I was a child I have been very close to the arts. I started playing the viola and dancing.
Then I started doing theatre as an amateur until I signed up for different courses. Now I am interested in the combination of different disciplines.
Last year I finished the professional dance conservatory in Granada (my home town), where I participated in the project “Young people in dance” as part of FEX, at the Granada Music and Dance Festival.
On the other hand, I have completed a higher degree in chemistry and I am still very interested in scientific research.
Born in Porto, Portugal, Mia Brandão is 39 years old. Having studied in the Integrated Masters in Software Engineering at Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto she moved to form a carrier in the field of cyber security and cloud operations across central and northern Europe.
After developing an interest in self exploration and the wide breadth of available human experience, she developed an interest in traditional dances which eventually transformed into an interest in physical expression, contemporary dance in particular.
Mid 2021 she started studying it regularly, having enriched that experience through multiple workshops regularly in Europe.
With a passion for fighting discrimination and a limitless amount of will to destroy existing systems that limit human expression, she believes that there's always a little more we can do to improve the world around us, no matter how small or insignificant it may be.
Mia has borderline unhealthy fascination with cosmology and doesn't quite understand why the fact that Darth Vader was Luke's father was considered to be such a big deal.
Panagiota Bafouni was born in Athens, Greece, in 1999. She has studied Photography and Audiovisual Arts at the University of West Attica.
She is a graduate of Higher Professional Dance School Aktina. During the 3 years studies, she performed with her colleagues on their own works and at works in collaboration with their teachers.
In the context of Dance School Ways Festival 2019 she presented a duet entitled "syncretism".
In 2020 she participated in a performance with her colleagues "Moloima" in the context of Athens Dance Video Project. The same performance was presented in the spring of 2020 in public space in the context of "Lycabettus Festival".
She participated in a research project and performance entitled "I and I" within Persa Stamatopoulou.
She has attended dance seminars with loanni Karounis, Natalia Gabrielczyk, Slava Sanchis, Georgia Vardarou, nikos Kalogerakis, Betty Dramisioti, Kiki Bacca, Sandra Grimma.
She has worked as teacher of contemporary dance and classical dance. She has the certification for "BASI pilates mat and props".
My name is Cecília I'm 27 years old and, I'm coming from a sports background, as a competitive level swimmer on my teen years and as a PhEd and Sports Science graduate of NKUA.
Since my sophomore year I've worked in the exercise field, training people of all ages, body abilities and neurodiversities, inside and outside the water. Movement is an important part of my identity, but exercise on it's own keeps my need for expression and creativity unmet, so during my studies I started contemporary dance and later on ballet and movement improvisation classes.
I have also attended Physical Theatre acting & improvisation seminars and participated in spoken poetry tournaments. After the first month's of the pandemic that my life was forced to slow down for a while I decided I wanted dance to hold a bigger space in my daily life and started training more intensively in contemporary and ballet dance. Right now I'm in Porto, participating in Oficina Zero 22/23 to explore my movement and creativity potential even more.
Sonja Marlis is an Austrian dancer/performer, based in Vienna. She studied music and dance education at the Music University Mozarteum, Salzburg. Their she met her mentors and teachers Stella Blanc and Hector Palacios from the dance company “trak dance ensemble“ who influenced her artistic approach.
In 2016 Sonja and her colleague Viviane Tanzmeister founded the mixed-abled dance company “flitz“. This project represents their artist vision to dissolve conventional ideas about dancers, the access to art and social justice.
In 2021 Sonja and Viviane created their first performance piece for young audiences named “keck und kühn“ wich was shown at the Festival “Kultursommer Wien“ and Kulturschiene Salzburg during 21/22.
Tabea Sandmann, 25 years old, from Germany, grew up in Dresden where she first got in touch with Contemporary Dance and Theatre Practices. Since then she has been part of different theatre projects and studied mostly Contemporary Dance and Gaga Technique. In 2016/2017 Tabea worked in COMPA, a Community Arts Center in El Alto (Bolivia) where she got to know different artistic approaches, like Agosto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and made her first experiences in facilitating workshops in the artistic field.
After returning to Germany, Tabea studied Performing Arts (Szenische Künste B.A.) at Universität Hildesheim between 2018 and 2022 and spent one semester at ESMAE Porto. During the past years she engaged in different projects, such as theatre performances, happenings and immersive experiences, facilitated workshops and created her first own works. In her artistic practice Tabea is currently interested in discovering new ways of relating to the social and political world throughout artistic expressions and aesthetics, facing topics like feminism, climate change and ableism. Find some of Tabea’s works in her portfolio, here.
Thalia Agapaki is 25 years old, she was born and raised in Crete, Greece. She started ballet and rhythmic gymnastics in the first years of her life. At the age of 14 she started contemporary dance and theater.
One of her major passions besides dance and art in general is nature cause many of her lived experiences growing up related to being in nature. When she finished high school she moved to Athens to study Natural Resources and Agricultural Engineering in the Agricultural University of Athens (2016-2022). In parallel she was exploring different aspects of dance while she was training on cotemporary, improvisation, ballet and capoeira. Furthermore she have been opting for workshops, festivals and dance lessons of very diverse instructors, especially in the field of improvisation and cotemporary dance, which expresses her more.
As for the performance and dance experience, she was an actress and choreographer at Killing Game” (theatrical play by Ionesco Eugene) at AFANToI Theatre Company, Greece (2016-2017). On 2018 she was worked as a dancer with Versus company in the Cotemporary Dance Festival “To treno sto Rouf” railway carriage theater. Additionally in 2020 she participated as a dancer and she recited her own poems in the short film " Θ Η Τ Α" https://www.instagram.com/tv/B-4wQo0AsRL/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link filmed by the graphic designer Christos Vasakakis and in the short film “Blue” directed by Mariliza Varanaki. Also in 2014 she participate in the short film " The Chair System" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hkkbZWamTc&t=100s filmed by Film Team of the University of Crete. Moreover, she had an improvisation performance in Tic Tac art center, in Crude Saturdays event.
Thalia is particular intrigued by improvisation, composition -choreography and video dance. She would like to participate in projects in order to raise awareness on environmental and sociopolitical issues and to build bridges of non-violent communication through art.
My name is Tamar and my greatest passion in Life is Art.
I confess that it is also one of my biggest challenges. I discover on stage and inhabiting the body, a blank sheet on which to experience the closest thing to freedom, and as a good human being in this system, she was not educated in that freedom.
At the age of 24, I dropped out of college and entered the CAU School of Circus and Urban Arts, in Granada. There I discovered my relationship with Art on stage and the body.
Continue with the Insomnia Project, where different Artists get together in different cities in Europe once a month, to create.
I did Oficina Zero in 2021-2022 and I return four months this 2023
The projects in which I have participated have always been self-managed.
-Purpurina, the union of 5 interdisciplinary artists, which resulted in a show that lasted one season.
-C'est ne que moi, dance and song duo
-Las Sirenas, sensory project on the redefinition of the myth of the Sirens
-Cia Chouka, a company that was born at the end of 2022, together with Tierra de nadie, a show that we continue in working progress
I have collaborated on nude drawing and photography projects. Creating a workshop on women in photography. History and redefinition of the body.
My personal search is through the body. In its stillness and movement. Understanding this as a bridge between the visible and the invisible.
Inti is Franco-Brazilian and a ex-IT developer. He is an artist from the squat scene. He took part in 3 squat openings which had a strong artistic influence in alternative circles in Paris. He is a self-taught dancer. His movements are inspired by popping, isolation and mime. He deals with everyday subjects in an absurd way, bringing it to trance. He tries to integrate current electronic music into his work.
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