Artist and choreographer Christina Elias was born in São Paulo, in 1978. In her creative process, the body is a tunnel through which several languages pass—movement, words, video, sound. The idea of “passage” informs her research and practice—both the “passage of time” with its consequences, such as the disintegration of what is material, the sublimation of what is subjective into the chronological, and the usurpation of one’s own by external forces, and the “passage of space” involved in any relocation, whether it is geographical, cultural, or social, or whether it is a migration of the self to other non-places.
Christina has a master’s degree in Movement Studies from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (2011) and a PhD in Design from Universidade Anhembi Morumbi in São Paulo (2020), and she completed a postdoctoral program in Communication and Semiotics — Arts of the Body at Pontifícia Universidade Católica (2021). She has created various solo and relational projects in museums and galleries in Brazil and Europe, such as Museu da Língua Portuguesa (São Paulo), MAM-SP, MIS-SP, MAC-USP, MAXXI Roma, Studio Stefania Miscetti, Radialsystem or the Uferstudios in Berlin. She has participated in performance and dance festivals in Brazil, Europe, and North America such as Plataforma Berlin, Dança em Foco, Mirada, and Bump 'n Grind Toronto, and she is the recipient of several important awards, such as the Funarte Award — Women in the Visual Arts, among others. She participated in the creation of the dance-opera Matsukaze (2011), choreographed by Sasha Waltz, and she trained butoh with numerous artists, such as Minako Seki and Yuko Kaseki, both in Berlin, and Tetsuro Fukuhara, in Tokyo. She is currently based in Lisbon, working as a contemporary dance instructor at Chapitô, c.e.m. — centro em movimento, and Associação Cultural Maloca. She is also working on two new dance/performance projects, one of them solo and the other one a group project, both to premiere in Portugal in 2026.
