Vanessa da Silva: Roda Viva — Live Performance

Pepa Ubera is a choreographer, artist, and performer based in London, originally from Madrid. Her interdisciplinary practice bridges performance, choreography, technology, and activism. Through immersive, collaborative, and research-driven processes, she challenges dominant narratives of progress, individualism, and productivity – inviting alternative futures shaped by pleasure and collective dreaming.

Her current project, The Machine of Horizontal Dreams, commissioned by Sadler’s Wells East for autumn 2025, constructs a speculative landscape where human and non-human entities co-create performative experiences. Informed by feminist posthumanism, pleasure activism, and science fiction, her work cultivates environments that prioritise cooperation over hierarchy and embodied knowledge over extractive logic.

Her work has been presented across the UK, Europe, Australia, and Chile, in venues such as Tate Modern, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Hayward Gallery and Matucana 100.

Rafael Braga (Mestre Piolho) is a Capoeira artist born in Patos de Minas, Minas Gerais – Brazil. He discovered capoeira aged 9yrs old. Always a happy kid, he became very dedicated to practicing his art and has never stopped training since.  He left Brazil at age 19 to train and teach beside his mestre in Paris- France.  After 6 years in France, he moved to Chester where he started his new capoeira group and a new capoeira chapter began. In 2019 he founded a new capoeira school: Balanço na Ginga. Mestre Piolho has traveled to more than 50 countries, teaching, learning and performing. He taught capoeira classes for dancers at University of Chester and in schools across Cheshire and Great Manchester. As well as teaching his capoeira group in Chester and Stoke-on- Trent, he also supervises international groups like Honfleur France, Vilnius – Lithuania and Duisburg Germany.

Angharad is a dance artist from Rhos on Sea regularly working as a performer, choreographer and facilitator across North Wales. She can often be found in Europe and occasionally in Brazil developing her skills in choreography, performance and teaching. Angharad is interested in how dance connects us as communities and how dance can allow us to find places and spaces of belonging. Her experience of intercultural performance making has a great influence on all her work. She is  interested in our connections to the landscapes of our lives, both physical and cultural. Angharad was awarded her Doctorate of Philosophy in Dance in 2023 for her thesis titled Navigating Landscapes of Longing and Belonging: Dialogues of Capoeira and Welsh Folk Dance in Intercultural Performance Making. 

Siri is originally from Stavanger on the west coast of Norway. She started dancing at a young age and went on to train in Germany, before moving on to further training in Manchester, UK. She moved to Wales in 1990, establishing her own practice as a performer, teacher and choreographer. Siri became instrumental in the early developments of community dance, setting up the community dance organisation Dawns i Bawb in North Wales. She became passionately involved in policy making and arts funding at a national level, leading to her appointment as Senior Dance Officer for the Arts Council of Wales from 2002-2012. In her work Siri became known for her drive in developing new initiatives supporting individual artists, helping them build sustainable career paths in Wales and internationally. She also makes her own work and works with other artists as a mentor and facilitator. She has been specialising in developing dance with older people, in care-home settings, and dance for people living with Dementia and Parkinson’s.