“I started dancing when I was 5 years old and this is a place of magic. Later as a teenager, those days when I felt blue, I would still go to my dance class routine and at some point, during or after dancing, my blues were gone. I think this is what keeps me going. We could now rationalise, justifying this as some chemical processes in my brain produced by exercising in dance, or that moving with other people to the rhythm of music makes us feel better. Surrendering to the moment of wonderment, I seek to stay with the simple memory of feeling in awe.” —Margarita Zafrilla Olayo.

Margarita Zafrilla Olayo is an artist and dancer balancing across practices, context and forms, working with dance, choreographic projects, performance installation, painting, still and moving-image.

Since 2019, she has been nurturing a choreographic context & process entitled TiLTING VERTICALITIES through an ever expanding series of exercises, artworks, experimental dances, and performance iterations. Through artistic methods, she investigates from the experience in the interior of the artwork, activating peaceful states for sharing space. All exercises in the artworks need more than one person involved in order to work.

Her choreography, performances, artworks and dances have been presented internationally at Northern Sustainable Futures in Sweden, Loop video art festival Barcelona, MACRO—Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Tate Britain, Siobhan Davies Studios, Independent Dance, Sadler’s Wells, Tate Archive, Barbican Art Gallery, Tate Modern in London, Tanzinitiative in Germany, Ritratti D’Artista in Italy, Zona Maco 2022 in México, and at The 58th Venice Biennale’s Giudecca Art District flaship exhibition “Body as Home”.

She was born in Madrid and lives and works in London since 1999.    

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photo Yanis Angel