about

  • photo by Bogdan Sarachec
  • photo by Mariya Sabotinova

Zhana Pencheva,

is a choreographer, dance performer and teacher from Bulgaria. She graduated bachelor and master degree in Dance and Choreography in New Bulgarian University, Sofia. With strong interests around body and movement, she continued her education through series of workshops in dance practices and programs such as Nomad dance academy and DanceWeb. During this period (2009) she created her first piece -“Glass of love”. Next projects: “Touch down” 2010 and “Episode IV – leisure time thoughts” 2011.

She is co-founder of Garage Collective, Sofia, a member of Nomad Dance Academy-Bulgaria and member of the board of Hamalogika, Burgas. As a performer, she was actively collaborating with Dune Dance Company, Bulgaria and took part in its co-producing projects.

She works pedagogically with groups of different constellations and needs, focusing her teaching around dance technique and choreographic structures. Artistically she is interested in the potential of the body as a moving structure and the role that emotions play in it. Her latest fascination is pole dance. 

In this last period, Zhana have been busy within collective authorship formats of creation, collaborating in regular terms with Aleksandar Georgiev and Darío Bardam. This includes also creation of several choreographic stage works – Celebrate it! (2016)- with people with disabilities and the burlesque performance “Neon” (2015).

For 2018-2020, together with Aleksandar Georgiev and Darío Barreto Damas, they are supported group in program “Creative crossroads” of Life Long Burning network with project trilogy dragON.  The first part of the work dragON aka PONY is recently nominated for IKAR prize 2020 of Union of artist in Bulgaria, category “Contemporary dance and performance”.

In her last solo work, “Six love songs”, she is exploring pop figures in contemporary culture, systems that embrace poly-relations and the identification of self in performative contexts. This choreographic concert is prized by Tri3avisim 2018, initiative of Guild of contemporary performance art in Bulgaria and also far it has been nominated performance for IKAR prize 2020th in the same category.

Zhana is member and co-initiator, together with Aleksandar Georgiev and Darío Bardam of STEAM ROOM. Visit our website HERE.