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Gisela Riba

I am Gisela Riba, a choreographer, performer, and educator based in Barcelona. I hold degrees in Humanities and Choreography. My work focuses on the body and its physical and expressive possibilities, integrating sound and light as dramaturgical elements. Due to my academic background, I am interested in fostering a transversal and connective perspective through the dialogue between the humanities and the performing arts. I understand stage creation as a way to reflect on and question our condition as human beings and the many forms of our fragility. I am drawn to building new possible worlds that pierce through “reality.”

www.giselariba.com
@giselariba85

Residency project

“I found myself on the edge of the sorrowful valley, of the abyss where infinite laments resound like thunder.”
Dante Alighieri

Inferus is a stage project featuring four female performers that explores the poetic potential of the pathetic and the non-human. A tragedy that moves through various imaginaries of Western art and is structured in three acts reflecting the evolution of life: a primordial ecosystem where beings follow non-human mechanics and dynamics; the emergence of the symbolic and the mythical; and finally, a world in ruins—a residual humanity whose only solace in the face of death is compassion among its individuals. The piece draws on the kinetic and acoustic imagery of Dante’s Inferno, and on the iconographic representation of Christ’s Passion, to explore how ancient symbols still resonate in contemporary society. For the otherworldly realms imagined by the Italian writer, like the suffering body of Christ, are distant metaphors of our own modern-day hells.

Residency archive Graner

  • 2025 · with The Dance Conservatory at Institut del Teatre  · Inferus