NAIA URRESTI

DANCER
CHOREOGRAPHER

NEXT PERFORMANCES

 

January 28th - 21:00

Bandé a Part - Rosenthaler Str. 39, 2. Hinterhof
10178 Berlin 

8-15 euro Sliding Scale (Roll the dice to see how much you pay!) - tickets at the door
 

What does it mean to be born a man? What does it mean to be born a woman? How do we have to behave, how do we have to move, how do we have to look like? Which roles are we supposed to fulfil? How do these roles affect the way that we relate to each other, how do they shape our intimacy? How are our beings and our personalities conditioned, sometimes limited, because we’re born one way or the other? Could it be different? What would we be if we hadn’t been raised in the mould of gender? Would we be more free, more authentic? Would we relate to each other differently, would or relationships change, would we be more vulnerable, more intimate? What is the punishment if we don’t follow these rules, and how are we conditioned by concepts as sin or guilt, when it comes to our self expression?

Naia Urresti is a neurodivergent Venezuelan dancer and choreographer based in Berlin. From a really young age she starts her investigation of the body and performing arts through artistic gymnasts and theatre, studying acting in the Centre of Artistic Creation T.E.T. and taking part in diverse theatre workshops with Maria Fernanda Ferro, Diana Peñalver, among others. She worked as an actress in different professional projects such as La Ola, Jack y las Habichuelas Mágicas, La Princesa y el Dragón and La Leyenda de Robin Hood with the Theatre Group Skena; and The Importance of being Ernest with Amentia Teatro. She also started her labour as an educator guiding theatre workshops in schools with the company Skena. Later on she continued her education in Contemporary Dance, Modern Dance, Flying Low and Passing Through, Ballet, Improvisation, Release Technique and Contact Improvisation with different institutions in Caracas, such as Taller Experimental de Danza Pisorrojo, Taller de Danza de Caracas and UNEARTE, and having among her teachers Susan Bello, Evelyn Pérez, Cristina Gallardo, Ricardo Rodríguez, Inés Rojas y Carlos Penso. Having professionally dance with diverse venezuelan dance companies such as Pisorrojo (Nepente, The Nutcracker, Fértil, Tesela, Pilastra, Seis Ecos), Neodanza (Azar, Festival de Improvisación Día 13, El Boquete, Furor Navideño), Sieteocho (Análogo) and Proyecto Movimiento (O: Una Mirada a Oriente desde Occidente), she continued her investigation in Europe taking workshops with David Zambrano, Humanhood, Sharon Friedman, Siciliano Contemporary Ballet, Tomi Paasonen, Descalzhina Danza and taking part of the EBB Junior Company. Once in Germany, she starts her investigation as a choreographer developing solo pieces, among them Buscando (2020), 1990 (2021), Penelope (2022), Crescent (2023) and E (2024), and presentig her projects in different spaces in Berlin and Europe. She's also a funding member of the collective The ထth Space, which was awarded with a residency in Ausland Berlin, and will develop an interdisciplinary project about Autistic Masking in December of 2024.

CHOREOGRAPHIC PROJECTS

E

What does it mean to be born a man? What does it mean to be born a woman? How do we have to behave, how do we have to move, how do we have to look like? Which roles are we supposed to fulfill? How do these roles affect the way that we relate to each other, how do they shape our intimacy? How are our beings and our personalities conditioned, sometimes limited, because we’re born one way or the other? Could it be different? What would we be if we hadn’t been raised in the mold of gender? Would we be more free, more authentic? Would we relate to each other differently, would or relationships change, would we be more vulnerable, more intimate? What is the punishment if we don’t follow these rules, and how are we conditioned by concepts as sin or guilt, when it comes to our self expression? This questions are the motor to the creation of this piece. Using the gestures, the movement of the arms, the legs, the way we walk, we sit, we move, we interact. Working in duo and solo, we’ll try, if not to answer, at least to reflect over these questions, giving our own perspective from our experience, as one man, one woman.

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

CRESCENT

A piece that talks about anger, about the fear of losing control, the fear of losing power, and how we as women restrain ourselves. As women we live our whole life policed, through criticism, catcalling, harassment, abuse and rape. We are expected to be desirable and beautiful, but we are the sole responsible for male desire and its consequences towards us. We are expected to enjoy our sexualities, but criticized and shamed if we do so. Our value is determined by the number of sexual partners we have, but we are lame and prudes if we don't have any. Where lies our power, when we are seen, and encouraged to see ourselves, never as subjects but as objects whose main value is the desire they inspire, but loose once we give our bodies to someone, as merely merch?

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

Performed in Brotfabrik (Berlin, Germany), Festival Moving Poets Be Fe:male by Tanz Tangente (Berlin, Germany) and Bande á Part (Berlin, Germany).

PENELOPE

Penelope is a dance solo that speaks about female desire. Connecting different scenes, each one representing different aspects of romantic relationships between women, starts a reflexion about the mandates that romantic love imposes on women, not only in heteronormative relations but in every bond we have. The waiting, the desire and the dissatisfaction of this desire, the unrest, the pleasure, the abandon and the disappointment form part of this journey that we make when we expose ourselves, many times without taking care of us, when we liaise with one another. The performer weaves and unweaves herself waiting, constructing, without getting to an end, and getting trapped in the expectation and ideal of the relationships.

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

Performed in Theater Expedition Metropolis (Berlin, Germany), Tangente Dance Festival No. 5 (Berlin, Germany) and Bandé a Part (Berlin, Germany).

1990

A girl is born. She'll learn to behave, to adapt herself, to fit into the form that society expects from her as a woman. Not too loud, always nice. If she wants more, she'll have to prove that she's strong, that she's capable, that she's smart, that she's different. She can play, but if she trusts too much, she's in danger, and it's her fault. Her body was made to bear children, it comes at a cost if she chooses not to. Other girls were born yesterday. More will come tomorrow.

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

Performed in Zukunft am Ostkreuz (Berlin, Germany), and Lake Studios (Berlin, Germany).

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

Projected in Social Media and in the Exposition Unclaimed Identities (Berlin, Germany).

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

PROYECTO MOVIMIENTO

SIETEOCHO

NEODANZA

PISORROJO

naiabm13@gmail.com