MAYA OLIVA is an Italian choreographer and dancer with family roots in south of Italy, Poland, Venezuela, and Canada. She was born in Montréal, grew up in Firenze, and has lived in Milano, New York, Brussels, and is currently hopping between Firenze and Helsinki.
She has performed her work in Italy, Belgium, France, Finland, Iceland, Czechia and various cities in India.
Influenced by her three-generation-long nomadic background, Maya explores themes of belonging, the loss of home, and unearthing home through the flesh, the radical joy of dance, and the exploration of the knowledge, histories, and archives held within the body.
She has been focused on how dance can deeply work with multitudes, thicken and inhabit the space between seeming opposites, and allow multilayered feelings, emotions, and states to burst, always in relationship to oneself and, through that, to other bodies - engaging thinking within collectivity in action.
Maya completed three years of studies at P.A.R.T.S. Brussels in 2016 and graduated with an MA in Choreography from the University of the Arts Helsinki in 2022.
Her work has received support from Centro Nazionale di Produzione Virgilio Sieni (IT), MigraMenti (IT), Finnish Cultural Foundation (FI), Arts Promotion Centre Taike (FI), and Goethe Institut (BE).
Maya has also been selected for platforms dedicated to emerging choreographers, including NEU NOW - ELIA (Europe’s Emerging Artists), Danse Dense - Les Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis (FR), and DNAppunti Coreografici (IT). In 2017, she won the first prize for choreography at the Jarmila Jeřábková Award in Czechia with the duet Blue Gloom, created and performed with Tina Afiyan Breiova.