michela filzi - dancer, dance writer and eco-somatic researcher
works artist-statement collaborations about
michela filzi (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist with a visceral fascination for plant life and sensous encounters with the world. Her artistic research lies at the intersection of ritual, storytelling, herbalism, and somatic dance, through which she explores other-than-human agency and ecological thinking in the context of the performing arts and diverse social settings.
She is a permaculture apprentice and her relationship to the land and rural communities informs her artistic work. Her participatory and site-specific performances take an eco-feminist stance, incorporating conviviality, practices of care, and the nurturing of art-making and creativity as gateways to connection and resilience in the face of ecological grief. She facilitates various types of workshops such as somatic foraging, embodied drawing, and plant meditations.
A poet at heart and a dance writer, she is a member of the collective STREAM, a platform for live art motivated writing (Tanzfabrik, Berlin). Since 2021 she is part of the collective WILD ACCESS and collaborates regularly with Berlin-based dancers and choreographers such as Alice Chauchat, Niels Weijer and Beatrix Joyce.
She holds a BA from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, (2016) and an MA in Solo Dance Authorship from the HZT, Berlin, (2021), she has developed a number of artistic projects that have been funded by national and international sources, including: Culture Moves Europe – Goethe Institut, DIS-TANZ-SOLO and Fonds Daku #TakeHeart Residenzförderung BiP (Neu Start Kultur, Die Beauftrage der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Dachverband Tanz), and Studienabschluss Stipendium für internationale Studierende (DAAD).
2018 © self-portrait - video animation by michela filzi
2023 © URBAN PLANTARIUM - photo by Evgenia Chetvertkova