Sara Montalvão (Porto, 1986) is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, creator, and educator whose practice centers on the body and dance as territories of memory, identity, and transformation. She is interested in memory as both a cause and a reflection of personal and collective identities, as well as in symbolic and metaphorical language in dramaturgical and compositional development. Her work is informed by an anthropological perspective that blends traditions, rhythms, and music with contemporary expressions, exploring hybrid formats and fostering dialogue among communities, artistic languages, and fields of knowledge.

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She earned a bachelor’s degree in Anglo-American Studies from FLUP (2008) and trained as an actress in Buenos Aires at the Augusto Fernandes Acting Studio (2010). In 2013, she completed the Advanced Training in Choreographic Creation and Composition (FAICC) with Companhia Instável in Porto, and in 2018, she initiated her Master’s degree in Contemporary Dance (ESMAE / Porto Municipal Theater). In 2020, she completed advanced training for creator-performers at the AREA school in Barcelona.

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Her training includes various intensive workshops with choreographers and methodologies that have profoundly influenced her artistic exploration, notably Gaga (Batsheva Dance Company / Ohad Naharin), Flying Low (David Zambrano), Improvisation (Edivaldo Ernesto and Horacio Macuacua), the Intact Method/Turtling (Rakesh Sukesh), Fighting Monkey (Natalia Pieczuro), Contact Partnering (Luke Jessop / Ion Tribe), and the Summer Intensive Performact. Somatic practices and, in particular, martial arts—Kung Fu and Capoeira—strongly influence her philosophy and vision of movement.

Her artistic journey spans multiple disciplines and performative contexts, integrating physical theater and clowning, urban and traditional dances, Afro-Brazilian, Latin, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern rhythms, as well as the construction and manipulation of animated forms and puppets. She has also engaged in community and social work as an instructor of contemporary dance, theater, and inclusive dance for diverse audiences and age groups. She has lived, studied and worked in Scotland, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, France, and Israel/Palestine.

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Since 2013, she has been pursuing a consistent career as a creator, performer, and educator, with both solo and collaborative works. She has collaborated with artists and organizations such as Mafalda DeVille, Miguel Moreira, José Artur Campos, Teresa Alpendurada, Edgar Pêra, Ana Bacalhau, CiM/Vo’Arte, Teatro do Mar, Diletta Bindi, Magnum Soares, and Ustad Fazel Sapand, among others. Between 2022 and 2025, she participated as a dancer in the creation and touring of the show Una Isla, by the catalan company Agrupación Señor Serrano, which premiered at the Grec Festival in Barcelona in 2023 and was presented on an intensive international tour.

In 2020, she co-founded the collective Unloop with visual artist David Negrão, beginning their collaboration with the interactive film Loop Mental. This was followed by the UNLOOP residencies and performances (2021), involving 14 movement artists as performers; the BIO LOOP project (2022), focused on biosensors for the performing arts; and RELOOP (2024), an interactive solo performance. From this journey emerged Unloop Lab, a working methodology that explores memory in the body as compositional material.

At the same time, she has deepened her own choreographic and compositional practice. In 2025, she served as a trainer leading a creative workshop for the FOR course—a professional development program for dancers at the Olga Roriz Company in Lisbon. In 2026, she premiered the solo piece Sonhos 7/24, touring internationally in Argentina and Brazil, and integrating training projects and the sharing of creative tools into the tour.

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Together with the Unloop collective, the Rhîza project will also premiere in 2026—a visual and interactive installation that blends choreographic thought with visual, technological, and sound art, based on a scientific collaboration with researchers in mycology and neuroscience.

She oversees the production, fundraising, and management of her projects, having secured support from GDA, DGArtes, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, GEPAC, and the Lisbon City Council.

Sara Montalvão continues to develop her work as a creator, performer, and educator, exploring hybrid practices that blend the body, technology, memory, and live sound design.

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