NAIA URRESTI

DANCER
CHOREOGRAPHER

NEXT PERFORMANCES

BERLIN - May 22nd and 23rd 2026
MADRID - June 12th, 13th and 14th 2026

Naia Urresti is a queer neurodivergent Venezuelan dancer and choreographer based in Berlin. With roots in artistic gymnastics, theatre, and contemporary dance, her work blends physicality, emotion, and experimentation. Trained in Venezuela and Europe, she has performed with multiple dance companies and developed a strong choreographic voice through works such as Buscando, 1990, Penelope, Crescent, E and Mis-Placed. Naia is a founding member of The ထth Space and Moving Mosaic, creating interdisciplinary projects and presenting her work in Germany, Spain, and Latin America.

CHOREOGRAPHIC PROJECTS

MIS-PLACED

Mis-Placed emerges from personal experiences of non-belonging—as an undiagnosed neurodivergent child, a queer woman, and an immigrant—to investigate how these realities imprint themselves on the body. Drawing from the unique movement qualities of each performer, the piece examines what sets us apart from the group: how a body that doesn’t belong occupies, crosses, and relates to space. Through gestures, repetition, and contrasting textures, the dancers weave and unweave themselves without achieving cohesion, exposing the ongoing struggle to find one’s place in a world where one is not part of the majority and lacks a supportive community.

Choreography by Naia Urresti.
Performance by Tea Nadir, Laura DeAngelis, Naia Urresti (and Dionel Pire).
Original Music by Nuwanlis.
Photos by Johannes Schuchardt.

E

A dance duo of two queer immigrants born and raised in Venezuela, a country where social conservatism and structural homophobia render the LGBTQ+ community invisible. From an intimate and visceral perspective, the piece interrogates imposed gender roles, the symbolic and real violence that conditions self-expression, and asks: what would we be like if we hadn't been shaped by gender? Through movement, their bodies rebel against the mold, exploring tenderness, freedom, guilt, and intimacy, and giving form to a poetics of resistance.

Choreography and Performance by Naia Urresti and Dionel Pire.
Original music by Nuwanliss.
Photos by Javid Aghajani Lichaei.

CHAOS, IN THIS ORDER

Tells the story of three late-identified queer neurodivergent artists exploring their ever-changing sense of identity and the masks they use to belong. It questions our sense of perception: below the layers of forced conformity, who are they really? The play underlines the lack of spaces in which to feel truly safe and the thin thread that binds us all to a world dictating what we are granted or denied. Performed in Ausland Berlin as a part of the residency All the Rivers.

Music and glass Installations by Samantha Tiussi
Paints and Poems by Coco Stoppelli
Choreography and Dance by Naia Urresti
Dramaturgy and Direction by Naia Urresti, Samantha Tiussi, Coco Stoppelli
Photos by Ausland Berlin

CRESCENT

This piece explores the anger born from growing up as women under constant surveillance—judged, desired, constrained, and blamed. It delves into the contradictions surrounding female sexuality, where empowerment and shame coexist, and where women are valued as objects of desire yet punished for expressing it. Through movement, the work navigates the internalized fear, guilt, and self-suppression that shape our identities, revealing the quiet violence that molds us. It is a journey into the body’s stored rage, a reclaiming of power through confronting the places where it lives.

Choreography and Performance by Naia Urresti.
Original Music by La Infanta de Bernardino.
Photos by Laura DeAngelis and Steffen Wollmann.

PENELOPE

“Seré la victimada por mi propio deseo y él, después de abandonar mi cadáver, huirá a continuar solitario su acecho.” — Diamela Eltit

Penelope is a dance solo that examines female desire through interconnected scenes drawn from the choreographer-performer’s personal experiences with romantic and erotic bonds between women. The piece reflects on the weight of romantic ideals placed on women—expectation, longing, pleasure, surrender, disappointment—and how these patterns shape all our relationships, beyond heteronormativity. Penelope weaves and unweaves herself, trapped between desire and its unfulfillment, revealing how women expose themselves in search of connection. Through movement, the work gives voice to desire as a way to reclaim narratives that emerge from intimacy and peripheral experiences.

Choreography and Performance by Naia Urresti.
Music By La Infanta de Bernardino.
Photos by Luca Fiorella, Anna Wider and Henryk Weiffenbach.

1990

A girl arrives into the world.
She’ll be taught to soften her voice, to smooth her edges, to mold herself into the shape that society prescribes for her. Polite, pleasant, contained.

If she dares to want more, she must earn it—prove she is strong enough, capable enough, clever enough, exceptional enough.

She may explore, but trusting too deeply puts her at risk, and the blame will fall on her.

Her body is expected to create life; choosing otherwise carries its own punishment.

Yesterday, new girls were born.
Tomorrow, more will follow.
And each one will bring with it a story yet to be disobeyed.

Choreography and Performance by Naia Urresti.
Music By La Infanta de Bernardino.

BUSCANDO

There was a locust whose dream was to become a mammal. She went to the best surgeons in the world and they told her that it was possible, but they would have to remove the wings. She accepted, and she became very famous as a complicated medical case, everybody was taking pictures of her and admiring this science achievement. And she was happy. But sometimes, when she was alone looking at the summer nights, she missed to fly.

Choreography, Direction and Performance by Naia Urresti.
Music By La Infanta de Bernardino.
Video by Rolando González.

WORK AS A DANCER

VORÜBERGEHENDE LÖSUNGEN UM DAS VERLORENE ZU BENENNEN

"Provisional solutions to name the irrecoverable", is a performative exploration on the fragility that inhabits the body after a forced displacement. Movement and language are territories of adaptation, marked by the fatigue of relearning new ways of inhabiting the world and reconstructing an identity in constant tension. Between gestures, memories and fragmented languages, the work asks how to re-signify what has been lost and how to inhabit what remains of it.

A performance by J. René Guerra
Interpreted by Naia Urresti

EBB JUNIOR COMPANY

One year process with the Junior group of the Elephant in the Black Box Company, directed by Jean Phillipe Dury.

1♀36 - Choreography by Marco Blásquez. Presented in Theatre Pradillo and Theatre of Canal (Madrid, Spain).

PROYECTO MOVIMIENTO

O: Una Mirada a Oriente desde Occidente (A look to Orient from Occident).

Choreography and Direction by Trina Frometa. Presented in the Art Gallery of the Universidad Metropolitana (Caracas, Venezuela) and the International Dance Festival EDANCO (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic).

SIETEOCHO

The Party wants to have the power out of love for the power itself. We don't care about the wellbeing of the others, we just care about the power.

Análogo - Choreography and Direction by Armando Díaz. Presented in the Hall Anna Julia Rojas of UNEARTE, and Theatre Cesar Rengifo in Petare (Caracas, Venezuela).

NEODANZA

Stable member of the dance company Neodanza. Participating in the projects:

Azar - Choreography and Direction by Inés Rojas, in collaboration with Carlos Penso. Presented in the Theatre Alberto de Paz y Mateos and Centro Cultural Chacao (Caracas, Venezuela).

Improvisation Festival Día 13, by Neodanza - Direction by Inés Rojas. With the performance of many artist of the Venezuelan dance scene. Presented in the Centro Cultural Chacao (Caracas, Venezuela).

And also in El Boquete and Furor Navideño, both directed by Inés Rojas and perfomed in Caracas.

PISORROJO

Stable member of the dance company Pisorrojo, perticipating in the projects:

Tesela - Direction and Choreography by Carlos Penso. Presented in Theatre Alberto de Paz y Mateos (Caracas, Venezuela).

Pilastra - Direction and Choreography by Carlos Penso. Presented in Theatre Alberto de Paz y Mateos, Plaza Cubierta (open spaces) of the Central University of Venezuela, Theatre Teresa Carreño (Caracas, Venezuela).

Seis Ecos - Direction and Choreography by Carlos Penso. Presented in the University Art Gallery of the UCV (Caracas, Venezuela).

Fértil - Direction and Chorography by Carlos Penso. Presented in the University Art Gallery UCV, Aula Magna UCV, and Theatre Alameda (Caracas, Venezuela).

Nepente - Direction and Choreography by Carlos Penso. Presented in Theatre Centro TET, Theatre Teresa Carreño, Plaza Cubierta (open spaces) UCV, Theatre Alberto de Paz y Mateos, Museum of Bellas Artes, Diverse Schools and Street Festivals, Theatre Alameda, Universitarian Art Gallery UCV (Caracas, Venezuela).