Lia Rodrigues was born in São Paulo Brazil in 1956 and studied classical ballet and history at the University of São Paulo (USP). After having been part of the São Paulo contemporary dance movement in the 1970s, she joined Maguy Marin’s dance company in France from 1980 to 1982. Back in Brazil, she set up the Lia Rodrigues Companhia de Danças in 1990 in Rio de Janeiro. In 1992, she created the annual contemporary dance festival Panorama de Dança, running it until 2005. Since 2004, her company has been involved in developing educational and artistic activities in the Maré favela in Rio de Janeiro in partnership with the NGO Redes de Desenvolvimento da Maré. This collaboration has established the Centro de Artes da Maré (Maré Arts Centre), which opened in 2009, and the Escola Livre de Danças da Maré (Maré Free Dance School) in October 2011. In her professional and artistic career spanning forty years, the choreographer has dedicated herself not only to artistic training and creation, but also to education in the form of workshops and seminars. With her blend of activism and utopia, Lia Rodrigues believes in the synergy between art and social processes. Her recent creations include Aquilo de que somos feitos (2000), Formas breves (2002), Encarnado (2005), Chantier poétique (2008), Pororoca (2009), Piracema (2011) and Pindorama (2013), Para que o céu nao caia (2016), Fúria (2018) and Encantado (2021). Lia Rodrigues is associate artist at the Théâtre National de Chaillot and the Centquatre-Paris.