Leonardo Rodrigues Santos
Leonardo Rodrigues Santos is a Brazilian-born dance artist and researcher whose work explores embodiment, perception, and collective experience through movement-based practices. Rooted in the cultural landscapes of Salvador da Bahia and nourished by Afro-diasporic and contemporary dance lineages, he works across performance, research, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Over the past decades, he has developed an international career across South America and Europe, taking on diverse artistic roles—including performer, creator, rehearsal director, choreographic assistant, educator, and artistic collaborator. His professional path has brought him into dialogue with artists and institutions such as Daniela Kurz, Yoshi Oida, Marcelo Evelin, CocoonDance, Dance Theatre Heidelberg, Staatstheater Nürnberg, and Oper Graz. His recent works—including “When It Falls: L’enfer”, “C’est Les Autres”, “Afrogenetics”, and “Re:Call”— explore transformation, interdependence, and ways of being together through collaborative and movement-based artistic practices.
Research Project:
The practice-based artistic research project “Reactivating Embodied Memory: Afro-Brazilian Movement in Contemporary Dance Practice” emerges from Leonardo Rodrigues Santos’ experience as a dancer shaped by Afro-Brazilian movement traditions in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. The project investigates how embodied memories and forms of knowledge transmitted through collective experience can be translated into contemporary dance contexts. Through engagement with living Orixá-related practices and studio-based experimentation, the research explores movement principles through processes of attunement and translation. It examines how such principles can generate narrative imagination and contribute to improvisational and compositional processes without reproducing or codifying traditional forms.
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