“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, dancer, choreographer and researcher balancing across practices, contexts and forms, working with dance, performance, choreographic projects, painting, still and moving-image.

Her choreography, performances, dance and artworks have been presented internationally at Northern Sustainable Futures(Sweden), Loop Video Art Festival (Barcelona), Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome—MACRO, Tate Britain, Siobhan Davies Studios, Independent Dance, Sadler’s Wells, Tate Archive, Tate Modern, Barbican Art Gallery (London), Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company—Meet The Snake, Tanzinitiative (Germany), Ritratti D’Artista (Italy), Zona Maco 2022 (Mexico), and at The 58th Venice Biennale’s Giudecca Art District flagship exhibition, Body as Home.

Since 2019, she has been nurturing a choreographic context and process entitled TiLTING VERTICALITIES—an ever-expanding series of somatic exercises, artworks, experimental dances, and immersive performance iterations that activate peaceful states within the shared space of the artwork.

Born in Madrid, she has lived and worked in London since 1999.

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