Maria

Maria (1999) is a Polish dancer and performer who graduated in Contemporary Urban Dance from Fontys Academy of the Arts. Her background is rooted in contemporary dance and street and club dance styles. She currently performs with The100Hands and is developing her practice through performance, collaboration and different movement environments. 

Maria is drawn to intensity, vulnerability and character on stage. She is interested in moments where something shifts — in the body, in the atmosphere, or in the way a movement is perceived. In Almost Seen, a duet created with Leonie Schwarzmann, she explores suppressed female anger through movement and a large frame that becomes part of the physical relationship between the two performers. 

Her curiosity increasingly reaches beyond movement itself. Light has become an important interest, particularly in how it can transform an atmosphere, direct attention and change the way a body is experienced in space. Circus has opened another field of curiosity through object manipulation, aerial work and risk. The work of KAIHO, particularly the approaches of Brandon Lagaert and Sara Angelucci, inspires her interest in bringing movement, image, atmosphere and physicality closer together. 

Maria wants to keep placing herself in situations that challenge what she already knows. She is curious to learn from artists with different approaches and to keep discovering what feels authentic to her as a performer. 

She is still figuring out exactly where that language will take her, and that is part of what makes her want to keep moving.