2026-2027 Choreographers
Isam Abad Montalvo
Supported par L’Abri – Genève
Isam is an ecuadorean performer based in Lausanne. He grew up Quito, in the middle of Los Andes. He started moving in different ways from a young age, going from ballet to breaking, swimming, capoeira, contact improvisation, partnering, acrobatics, contemporary dance, boxing, climbing and pole dancing. after performing and touring with different companies in Ecuador, the euro-centric standards of contemporary dance led him to search for schools in occidental Europe. After a semester at the Contemporary Dance School of Hamburg, and some questions regarding the cis-heteronormative colonial patterns reproduced in white institutions, he moved to Lausanne to pursue the bachelor at La Manufacture. He’s been working in the Swiss scene, developing his own artistic practices, meeting bodywork with poetic writing, and dj-ing. His solo work has been shown at Les Urbaines in Lausanne, TU in Geneva and at the Lila Queer Festival, in Zurich. He has also collaborated with Marara Kelly, Baby Volcano, Cecilia Moya Rivera, Nina Negri, Tamara Cubas, Sami Galbi. He’s one of the founders of the KissMyAss club in Zürich.
Catarina Barbosa
Supported by TROIS C-L in Luxembourg
Catarina Barbosa is originally from Portugal. She joined the Portuguese National Conservatory in Lisbon in 2009. She completed her professional training abroad at the Ballet Junior de Genève, until 2014. She had the opportunity to work on pieces by Stjin Celis, Roy Assaf, Gustavo Ramirez, Lucinda Childs, and others. During her last year with Ballet Junior, Catarina also joined Compagnie Gilles Jobin (CH) and took part in the creation “Quantum” in July 2013, which toured internationally.
Based in Luxembourg since 2016, she works for her company AWA As We Are, of which she is Co-founder and Artistic Director with Baptiste Hilbert, and also works as a freelance artist. She collaborates with various choreographers including Benvindo da Fonseca (PT), Arthur Pita (UK) and Léa Tirabasso (LU/UK) and others. Léa Tirabasso’s piece The Ephemeral Life of an Octopus gave her the chance to perform in one of the Last twenty pieces in the renowned Aerowaves competition.
Catarina is now leading the artistic part of the company creating the trio MARY’S DAUGHTERS, opening in May 2025, and a solo estranha forma, opening in November 2025.
Caroline Allaire
Supported by POLE SUD – CDCN Strasbourg
Caroline Allaire trained at the Conservatoire de Nice, then at the Conservatoire de Paris. From 1995 to 2004, she performed with the Ballet de l’Opéra de Nice and then the Ballet de l’Opéra national du Rhin. She became an independent artist in 2004 and collaborated with Louis Ziegler, Association Woo, Christian and François Ben-Haïm, David Brandstätter, and Malgven Gerbes. She has participated in all of KiloHertZ-Vidal Bini’s creative projects. At the same time, for several years she has been teaching a method based on the different practices she has encountered in her professional career and on original tools she has developed for children, as well as for teachers and young dancers.
Matteo Sedda
Supported by Grand Studio in Brussels
Matteo Sedda, choreographer, dancer, and activist of Sardinian origin, has collaborated and continues to work as a freelance for various artists, including Jan Fabre, Enzo Cosimi, Aïda Gabriëls, Igor x Morena and Dag Taeldeman & Andrew Van Ostade.
Since 2018, Sedda has been pursuing choreographic research, deeply marked by his experience with HIV. Exploring desire and vulnerability, he aims to create new representations of AIDS that renew the dialogue between historical memory and artistic remodelling.
His works pays tribute to the artists lost to complications related to GRIS (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency), establishing a contemporary dialogue with the past and making his infected body the started point for a new choreographic writing.
After his first solo POZ!, in which his coming out as a person living with HIV became both a political and artistic manifesto, he continued his journey with FUCK ME BLIND, a choreographic duet adwarded the DNAppunti Coreografici 2024 prize.
As an activist he shares his personal experience to provide information and support regarding HIV. He collaborates with several organisations from Europe, including LILA, Sensoa, Ex Aequo and Plateforme Prévention Sida.
Ana Rita Xavier
Supported by CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva
Ana Rita Xavier (1995, Portugal) are a performer, choreographer and researcher based in Porto. Currently part of the collective Amparo99. They graduated in Escola Superior de Dança (Lisbon, 2016). As a co-creative performer, they emphasize collaborations with Gustavo Ciríaco, Guilherme de Sousa and Pedro Azevedo, Jo Castro, Bod Wilson trio and Wura Moraes, Gil Mac, André Braga and Cláudia Figueiredo, Xana Novais and Aura. As a choreographer, Zona 1 (TMP, 2019), Título meramente descritivo ou duas mulheres e uma plateia, in co-creation with Sofia Alvernaz (TMP, 2021), Ming the Clam and the Immortal Jellyfish (TMP, 2023), BEAUTIFUL, in co-direction with Daniel Conant (DDD Festival, 2025) and Tender Riot in co-direction with Daniel Conant (premiere at GUIdance, 2026). Their current research project Instimulável focuses on collaboration, horizontallity, visibility, spectatorship, power dynamics, interdependency and resistance.
Karolin Stächele
Supported by Theater Freiburg
Karolin Stächele has been creating full-length pieces for various spaces and stages under the label DAGADA dance since 2014. Based in Freiburg, she works with a dynamic group of artists from different genres and develops a repertoire that includes both solo and group performances. In an open, participatory artistic discourse, she choreographs a vibrant dance language that always refers to the social change surrounding her. The company has presented its work nationally and internationally, including in Berlin, Leipzig, Basel (CH), Haarlem, The Hague (NL), Brest (FR), Barcelona (ES), and Prague (CZ). Karolin was a co-founder and active member of tanznetzIfreiburg (2018-2022). Since September 2021, she has been co-director of the training programs at bewegungs-art freiburg.
“My work is loud and tender; it seduces and confronts. It challenges by refusing to simply please, daring instead to explore the raw and uncomfortable – that which lies deep within us all and is a part of who we are.” Karolin Stächele
Audrey Merilus
Supported by CCN – Ballet de Lorraine
Audrey Merilus is a French artist of Afro-Caribbean descent based between Brussels and Paris. She studied at the Conservatoire Régional de Paris (CRR) and continued her training at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon (CNSMDL), before obtaining her bachelor’s degree in dance from the Training Cycle at P.A.R.T.S.
She has worked with various international productions and artists, including: Gisèle Vienne, Soa Ratsifandrihana, Florentina Holzinger, Maud le Pladec, Michiel Vandevelde, and Rosas for the revival of Drumming.
As an extension of her artistic journey, Audrey’s evolving practice has extended into curation. For the tenth edition of Radiant Nights at DeSingel (Antwerp), she initiated the project COLLECTIVE MEMORIES, a program in which she invited several artists to share their work during two evenings composed of performances, literature, visual arts, textiles, and sound. She’s currently working on the second edition in Atelier 210 in Brussels (2025).
Recently, she has taken on the role of dramaturg for Stanley Ollivier’s last work Spine of Desire: Wounds Without Tears, Out of One Skin in Diamonds and Shit (2025). She joined CROWD by Gisèle Vienne, and is a performer of her forthcoming creation which will premiere at the Schauspielhaus Zürich (2026).
Audrey’s ongoing journey merges diverse artistic practices and collaborations, establishing her as a dynamic actor in the international dance and performance scene.
Léo Gras
Supported by the Ballet de l’Opéra national du Rhin
A choreographer and performer, Léo Gras trained and graduated from the Pôle National Supérieur de Danse Rosella Hightower from 2010 to 2019 in study sports, before becoming a professional dancer-performer at the Centre Chorégraphique National Ballet de Lorraine under the direction of Petter Jacobsson, he participated in numerous creations with various choreographers (M.Cunningham, T.Brown, M.Le Pladec, O.Dubois…).
In 2024, he founded the structure BOIS DORMANT, to enable him to develop his choreographic and artistic projects. Choreographing since his studies, he created his first project, I’ll Give You My Eyesin 2020, followed by his first piece Les Phalènes in 2022. Since then, he has developed a body of work combining dance, costume, theater, film and doll design, questioning identity and self-definition. Since 2022, he has been working on the reproduction of his own body through the creation of human-sized dolls. His aim here is to question the notion of individuality and personality through the act of doubling.
He obtained his state diploma as a classical dance teacher in 2023 from the Centre National de la Danse in Pantin. At the same time, he has been studying at SciencesPo Paris in the Certificat pour Sportif de Haut Niveau since 2020.