Maria Mercedes Flores Mujica
is a Venezuelan dancer and choreographer living in Cologne. Before moving to Cologne to study dance at the University of Music and Dance, she studied modern languages and translation at the Universidad de Los Andes in Venezuela. Since 2018 she has been creating her own work in collaboration with various and in 2024 she received the NRW KulturSekretariat Tanzrecherche scholarship. Her choreographies are based on the complexity of rhythm and its perception, and on knowledges of folk and contemporary dance, celebration, and rituals.
For her research at K3 she will be engage in an exploration of Joropo, a couple dance where gender roles are binary, and inspired by the syncretism of Venezuelan spiritism. This dance gives voice and volume to unheard cosmologies, voices silenced due to patriarchal-colonialist developments. Creating a celebratory, ritualistic and interactive environment, Maria seeks, together with the audience, to celebrate, reconnect and heal the relationship with the female voice muffled over time.