About us - The coreographer

Combining artistic creation and teaching activities has been the key in the career of the choreographer, dancer and teacher Esther Weitzman. A path which has been constructed with a large and intense research on the movement of the human body. Her work as a creator, therefore, is closely connected with this research, what engraves, in her choreographies, a sort of enactment quality in which the vigour of the movement, its strength and spatial writing speak to silence, speak to pauses, creating a kind on language in which the weight of the body creates its own lines.

The job of choreographing, as Esther stands for, is the result of a process that researchs on the body, its different dynamics, having, on physical vigour, one of its main assets: "I am concerned with the influence of gravity on the body, the relation established with the floor. Weight, strength, vigour. And so the lightness which is able to be born here".

When she founded, in 1999, the "Esther Weitzman Dance Company", she established herself as a choreographer in the world of dance, creating a company whose characteristics have been settled along these four years, determing, at the same time, a singular pattern of excellence which is easily recognized in her works.

Graduated at Escola Angel Vianna (Rio de Janeiro/Brasil), in 1987, Esther deepened her studies with Ivaldo Bertazzo, at Escola de Reeducação do Movimento, in São Paulo (Brasil), from 1994 to 1996.

Her trajectory as a teacher states her carefulness with the quality on teaching of dance. Between the years of 1991 and 2000, she worked as a teacher at Escola Angel Vianna and where she was a coordinator. Nowadays, she is one of the teachers at the Graduation Course at UniverCidade (Rio de Janeiro/Brasil) ; besides being the teacher of contemporary dance at PUC/RJ (Pontifícia Universidade Católica).

Because of her creative needs and her teaching activities, she founded, in 1992, "Studio Casa de Pedra - Centro de Educação e Arte do Movimento", which stands for one of the places of excellence of dance teaching and development of new languages of movement in Rio de Janeiro.

In 2001, Esther Weitzman was choosen, together with other choreographers from all over Brasil, to take part in the first edition of "Rumos Dança" project, by Instituto Itaú Cultural, in São Paulo, with her solo Território. In this year, she was awarded with a scholarship given by "VI Programa de Bolsas RIOARTE", a culture institute of Rio de Janeiro City Hall to make a research which was called "História da Sonoridade dos Corpos - uma tentativa de dançar Clarice".

Besides that, in 2002, she was invited, as a choreographer, to the "Suzane Dellal Centre for Dance and Theatre - International Exposure Neve - Tzedek", in Tel-Aviv, Israel.

Searching for a dialogue with other bodies, besides the dancers of her company, she exhibited, at "X Panorama RIOARTE de Dança", in October/2001, the choreography Jamais fomos modernas, created with the guest dancers Flávia Meireles and Patrícia Riess.

Creating, Dancing. Forming. Not necessarily in this order, these are the motives of Esther Weitzman's trajectory. A path which has been designed from an intense and productive curiosity on the body and its movement.