Anna Rubio

Anna Rubio (b.1976, lives and works in Catalonian High Pyrenees) is a dance artist and movement educator/therapist, whose practice fuses together her experience from her career as a performing dancer and as an educator.

Rubio was trained first in classical and later in contemporary dance. In 1995, she began to work with the dance group of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. From 2002 until 2006, she worked with the Igual da Igual company. In 1996 she finished a degree in Psychology and in 2009 an MA in Dance Movement Therapy. In 2010-2012, she founded and directed Dansburg, a space dedicated to Movement Arts and Performance in the Catalan Pyrenees. In 2011, collaborating with Montse Martí, Rubio started the Lawu project that set out to explore the relationship between (human) movement and environment. Together the two experimented with ways of attuning to the moment and to one’s immediate environment. They sought after artistic expressions that would reflect the subtle dialogues a dancer engages in with her or his surroundings. The core of this work stems from Amerta Movement, created by Suprapto Suryodarmo, a Javanese movement artist. In 2013/14 Rubio realised pieces Two Women, One Earth at Festival of Religiosity and Art, Indonesia, The Ugly Garden Flowers at MAU Festival, Granollers; Grassland, Tree and Ant for festival Aplec Saó, Farrera; and All the Trees I Met in Srawund Seni Candi, Indonesia. In 2013, Rubio was invited to the Frontiers in Retreat residency project by Lluis Llobet, the Director of the Centre d’Arte i Natura (CAN), Farrera. In 2017, Rubio will realise a new piece in Helsinki, Finland, commissioned by HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme.

Rubio’s practice has evolved through her extensive travels and in-depth research into multitude of movement practices in different parts of the world, especially in Indonesia. In her works, Rubio often attempts to seek a connection and to form fleeting yet intense relations with diverse materials and elements in her environment. She mostly works at sites that seem relatively untouched by modern human technologies or man-made infrastructures. However, the pieces always negotiate the fragile boundaries between a human body, a human existence, a human temporality and other forms of life. In her recent works, Rubio has often worked with (more specifically in) trees. In September 2015, as a conclusion to her Frontiers in Retreat residency at SERDE Cultural Centre, Rubio conducted and danced a challenging, highly vertical choreography in a grand, ancient beech tree in the village of Aizpute, Latvia. Accompanied by one of Latvia’s most acclaimed pianists, the hypnotizing piece enchanted its local and international audiences.

– Jenni Nurmenniemi, Curator, Frontiers in Retreat (HIAP)