Maria Ferreira Silva

Maria Ferreira Silva is a Brussels based dance artist. She engages with the artistic field through entanglements, reflecting on the intersection of the roles she embodies as dancer, choreographer, assistant, rehearsal director, outside eye and costume creator.

She started her artistic journey at the age of six performing “free dances” at shows organised by her dance teacher Fernanda Mafra and graduated from the National Conservatory of Lisbon in 2006, P.A.R.T.S. in 2010 (support from Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation), and Uniarts, Stockholm in 2023 (npp program). In her solo Wild Explosion of Radical Softness (2025) she uses a large piece of textile to invoke other bodies, overlapping dances of the past, present and future while inviting the audience to co-fabulate.

As a performer, Maria has worked with Daniel Linehan, Radouan Mriziga, Renan Martins de Oliveira, Anneleen Keppens, Maud le Pladec, Benjamin Vandewalle, Trajal Harrell and she has developed her teaching practice at Royal Conservatory of Antwerp, Charleroi Danse and Uniarts, Stockholm. She worked as assistant choreographer with Maud le Pladec and as a rehearsal director with Trajal Harrell at the Schauspielhaus Zürich. Currently she engages in different ways and forms in the works of Alice Van der Wielen-Honinckx, Jeanne Colin, Lisa Vereertbrugghen, Trajal Harrell and develops her own choreographic work with the research project Mani-bonding-festo.