Fernanda Lippi

Award-winning Choreographer and Movement Director, Actress and Dancer, Founder of Zikzira Physical Theatre and Zikzira Action Space, Fernanda Lippi has created critically acclaimed work for film, stage as well as site-specific productions. Interested in innovation and exploring the potential of movement vocabulary, she has established an inimitable, exciting style. Fernanda was recipient of a youth bursary for the Royal Ballet and the Cuban National Ballet, and a scholarship from the Trinity Laban in London where she participated in the exchange programme for Latin American Talent at the Lincoln Centre. She performed the solo performance Canvas at the opening of the Tate Modern, and toured Même Vieux Manteux in Europe; as a dancer, she worked with Lea Anderson and Rosemary Butcher. Subsequently she collaborated with some of the most influential theatre companies in South America such as Teatro da Vertigem and Lot. Fernanda has choreographed all of Zikzira Physical Theatre's productions and co-directed several films: two shorts, and two medium-length fiction films, a documentary and two feature films; an installation, two urban intervention projects and three full-length live shows. Her work has been exhibited at The Barbican, The ICA, The Laban Theatre, Regent Street Cinema, Tate Modern, Sky Arts, Riverside Studios, Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), Teatro Akropolis (Italy), São Luiz Teatro Municipal (Lisbon), SESC, CCBB and Itaú Espaço de Cinema (Brazil) amongst many others. Live production highlights include Urbe, Verissimilitude, Eu vos Liberto, The smooth wax of ingenuous souls, A ultima palavra é a penultima, and Outro em Si. Fernanda curates Zikzira Action Space, a pioneering cultural hub in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, officially opened by Jaroslaw Fret, Director of the Grotowski Institute, Wroclaw. Fernanda has broken new ground exploring a combination of dance and film, which led her to choreograph the first feature-length dance films to be made in Brazil, the critically acclaimed As Cinzas de Deus (Ashes of God), named Time Out Critic's Choice - a first for a dance film. Her second feature film, Sea without Shore, in which she also performs as an actress, co-directed with Andre Semenza, premiered to excellent reviews at the Glasgow Film Festival in 2015 and was subsequently released in the UK art house cinema circuit and released in Brazil through the country's largest art-house cinema chain Espaço Itau de Cinema. Together with Javier de Frutos and Paul Roberts, Fernanda was invited by BalletBoyz to co-choreograph Kama Sutra, a prime-time production for Sky Arts. Fernanda choreographed and performed in Marcus Waterloo's short dance film We Have Bled. In 2017, she returned to live performance choreographing Outro em Si, a large- scale live performance commissioned by SESC Brazil, featuring of 12 dancers. The performance was nominated for five Sinparc Brazilian Performance Awards, picking up the coveted Best Show 2017 and Best Dancer 2017 Awards. Sea without Shore premiered in Hong Kong at the Jumping Frames Festival 2018 and was chosen for the Official Selection of the BAFTA-qualifying Aesthetica Film Festival in York in 2018. Memória Silenciosa, a mid-length dance film is in post-production. In 2019 Fernanda was cast as the Gentile Lady in Ric Burns's TV series Dante's Divine Comedy'; she produced, choreographed and acted in the music video 'Unfair Game', the title track for the new album by Kid Loco.