Mari Paula (Mariana de Paula Ferreira, Brazil, 1984) moves between dance and performance. As a performer, she is noted for her time with Balé Teatro Guaíra and Colectivo Casa Selvática. As a creator, she has been awarded the National Funarte Klauss Vianna Dance Award for her first work, and her pieces have been represented in festivals across Africa, South America, North America, and Europe.
She is also a co-founder of Las Vivas Ibero-American Dance Platform and has been working at the associative level to improve the dance sector in Spain and Ibero-America since 2019.
LAKE MACHINE is a contemporary dance and performance piece created by Mari Paula, which revisits iconic female figures such as Ophelia from Hamlet and Odette/Odile from Swan Lake. The work questions patriarchal narratives in classical theatre and ballet, reimagining these women beyond tragedy, sacrifice and silence.
Blending dance, theatre, performance art, sound experimentation and visual dramaturgy, the piece creates an intense stage universe where movement becomes an act of resistance, transformation and liberation. Through an autobiographical layer connected to motherhood, grief and loss, Mari Paula transforms personal mourning into a poetic and political gesture.
Inspired by references such as Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine and Audre Lorde’s concept of “the erotic” as a source of creative power, LAKE MACHINE explores memory, desire, gender, bodily autonomy and the possibility of rewriting inherited cultural narratives. Adult audiences: 17+
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