MAYA OLIVA is an Italian choreographer and dancer with family roots in Italy, Poland, Venezuela, and Canada. She was born in Montréal, grew up in Florence, and has lived in Milano, New York, Brussels, and is currently based between Florence(IT) and Helsinki(FI).
She has performed her work in Italy, Belgium, France, Finland, Iceland, 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, through the craft of choreography, 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 been supported by Centro Nazionale di Produzione Virgilio Sieni (IT), Finnish Cultural Foundation (FI), Arts Promotion Center Finland (FI), Culture Moves Europe - Goethe Institut (BE). Her work has also been selected as part of platforms for emerging
choreographers such as NEU NOW - ELIA (Europe’s Emerging Artists), Danse Dense (FR) and DNAppunti Coreografici (IT).