marcela levi
Improvável Produções

© Bea Borges
In 2010, choreographers Marcela Levi (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and Lucía Russo (Patagonia, Argentina) founded Improvável Produções (Improbable Productions), a nomadic place of training, research and creation, in Rio de Janeiro. Levi & Russo are committed to a polyphonic direction in which different inventive positions intertwine in a process that embraces deviant lines, dissent and internal differences as a constructive critical force and not as self-exclusive polarities.
The work of Improvável Produções tends towards an experimental aesthetic that emerges from a singular encounter with the impasses of Brazilian society. There is a rigorous effort to, instead of succumbing, convert tensions and entanglements into the very matter of an artistic production.
The Improvável Produções is responsible for the conception, creation and production of the dance pieces "Monstrous Nature" (sponsored by the Rio de Janeiro City Department of Culture project Fostering Dance 2011); "Mordedores" included in the list of the newspaper O Globo as one of the outstanding dance shows in 2015 (co-produced with the Iberescena Fund and sponsored by the Rio de Janeiro City Department of Culture project Fostering Dance 2015); "Iron Mouth" included in the list of the newspaper O Globo as one of the outstanding dance performances in 2018 and nominated for the Cesgranrio Dance Prize in the categories "best choreography" and "best dancer", "Let it Burn" included in the list of the newspaper O Globo as one of the outstanding dance performances in 2017 and "HARM-ONY" (co-produced by the Iberescena Fund, Funarte / Ministry of Culture of Brazil, NAVE and Ministry of Culture of Chile), grrRoUNd" (2021), with the co-production of Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Kaaitheater, Julidans, Pact Zollverein and Something Great; the urban intervention "Sandwalk with me" developed between London and Rio de Janeiro with the support of the State Secretariat of Culture of RJ and with the co-production of the Panorama Festival 2013; the collective reading "Given Words" (2021) with the sponsorship of the Municipal Secretariat of Culture of Rio de Janeiro through the Aldir Blanc Law and the film "short, short, long and sometimes short, long, short" (2021) co-produced by Panorama Raft. Parallel to the creation core, Levi & Russo give workshops in art centers and universities in Brazil and abroad.
Marcela Levi (1973, Rio de Janeiro) is a choreographer and performer. Graduated from the Angel Vianna Dance School (Rio de Janeiro), Levi has been a resident artist at the Art Center Les Recollets (France), at the Artistas en Residencia - Casa Encendida / Aula de Danza Program (Spain), at Espacio Cultural Azala, (Spain), at the Laboratório de Criatividade Urbana ON.OFF, Guimarães 2012 - European Capital of Culture (Portugal), guest artist at the Rio Occupation London program, at the London Cultural Olympiad promoted by SEC RJ (London) and received the Batiscafo scholarship (Cuba). Her projects previous to the foundation of Improvável Produções: "Image" (2002), "Mass of Senses" (included as one of the ten best dance works of 2004 in the O Globo newspaper list), "In-organic" (Klauss Vianna Award 2007, Programa Rumos Dança Itaú Cultural, included by the English Artsadmin organization in "The top 40 illustrated guide to 2008", cited in the 2008 yearbook of the German magazine Ballettanz and included as one of the ten best dance works of 2007 in the list of Jornal do Brasil) and "Around the hole everything is edge (awarded by Funarte in the Program of Grants for Artistic Creation 2008, included among the highlights of dance in 2009 by the specialized critics of the newspaper O Globo, awarded the ZKB Recognition Award / Zürcher Theater Spektakel, Zurich 2010 and the PROCULTURE Award 2010) were presented at various festivals and art centers in Latin America an Europe such as :: Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon), Impulstanz Festival (Vienna), Les inaccoutumés - Ménagerie de Verre (Paris), In Transit (Berlin), In Presentables (Madrid), Rencontres Choregraphiques de Seine-Saint-Denis (Paris), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Nottdance (Nottingham), Arnolfini (Bristol), Teatro Solís (Uruguay), COCOA Festival (Buenos Aires), Ceará International Dance Biennial, Casa França Brasil, MAM RJ. Levi collaborated with the artists Lia Rodrigues, Vera Mantero, Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Laura Erber, Manuel Vason, Cristina Moura, Dani Lima and Gustavo Ciríaco, among others.
Lucía Russo (Patagonia, Argentina, 1975) is a choreographer and performer that studied at Rojas Cultural Center | University of Buenos Aires and was guest student at the European Dance Development Centre in Arnhem (Netherlands). Since 2000 she dives into the practice of direction in dance field, creating (in Argentina, previous to the foundation of Improvável Produções) the pieces "arid or steppe" (2004), "The silent side of things" (2009), "Fantasmagoría" (2010) and interactive installations "DUO" (2003) and "Sensorama" (2006), among other projects, presented in several festivals and art centers from Latin America. Russo was head professor of Choreographic Composition at the University of Arts in Buenos Aires (2007- 2009) and coordinated the project Dialogues: Interchanging creation procedures (2006-2008) in Argentina, Uruguay, Perú, Venezuela and México, in partnership with the Red Sudamericana de Danza. Since 2006, she has been teaching at universities and other educational institutions in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, Chile and Spain. Between 2010 and 2013 she developed the audience program "Futuros Espectadores" in theaters, public schools and other institutions in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. Russo has collaborated, among other artists, with De La Guarda Group, Diego Gil, Gustavo Ciríaco, Javier Bustos and Ayara Hernández & Félix Marchand.
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