Team
MARAÑA KOMPANIE
Maraña is an interdisciplinary performance company known for its immersive wool art installations created by Chilean artistic director Paula Riquelme. Founded in 2018 with artists from all over the world, it now brings together an all-female team to create an organic, vertical universe that combines aerial acrobatics, object theater and live music to take the audience on a sensory and unique experience.
Paula Riquelme Orbenes (CHL)
ARTIST DIRECTOR
Choreography, textile art She has been producing and directing circus shows for more than 12 years. As an aerial choreographer and director of circus arts, she specializes in the performance of aerial acrobatics. She has worked in the French-Swiss company “De Paso” as a performer and assistant director (Ulrich Hirzel) and with others such as “Y Punto”, “Binomia”, “Cassis” and “Balance”. In 2016, she was hired as an aerial choreographer for the opening show of the Gotthard Tunnel inauguration, directed by Volker Hesse, before moving to Berlin to create Maraña. He has lived in Berlin since 2017 and has been in permanent residency at Monopol (Berlin) since 2019, where he has developed the Maraña project and created various works with the company such as “Inside”, “Insight”, “UNK”, “Leg-Lag”, “Accident” and “Organism” as well as the installation with aerial interventions “Wind”. Her installations are developed with the aim of creating performances that mix circus and dance.
She is currently working on the project “Turbulance TXL23”, organizing and directing the performances (Tegel, Berlin).
Luka Gyoha (SLN)
LIGHT DESIGNER AND SOUND ENGINEER
Born on 03.02.1985 in Murska Sobota, Slovenia. Light and sound artist living in Berlin since 2016, trained as an electrical engineer and electronics technician. As a lighting artist, he creates unique lighting designs for theater and music events. In the past he designed lighting elements for the Detect Classic Festival, Fusion Festival, Hütte Festival, and took over the sound engineering management at Vintage Warderobe, Pangea Festival. Since 2021 rather accompanies Maraña as lighting designer and sound engineer .
Livia Etelka (FR)
ENSEMBLE Aerialist, dancer, producer, puppeteer
Livia studied aerial and contemporary dance in 2008 (Santa Barbara Center for Aerial Arts USA) and has since worked as a freelance circus artist worldwide. For four years she worked with director Daniell Alnuma as a lead performer in contemporary dance theater productions in India and under Gauri Devi’s production company Cirque de India. As artistic director, Livia curated an international circus collective “The Feral Banyan Circus” for 3 years to produce full-length circus shows with live music.
Since moving to Berlin, Livia has been an active member of the circus community, participating in the funded collective site-specific circus project “Rebuilding Communities” (funded by Draussenstadt and the Performing Arts Fund) as well as local cabarets in Katapult, Zirkus Mond and Monopol. She also performs with “Die Flugträumer”, an acrobatic and artistic circus troupe that performs at medieval markets throughout Germany. Livia works as a puppeteer with the DUNDU Giants of Lights Company, animating 5 meter high puppets in Germany and internationally at the World Expo in Dubai, the Opening Ceremony in Riyadh and the Cabalgata in Spain and the Netherlands. She is part of the MARAÑA Company, which created and premiered ORGANISMO with the help of #TakeHeart from the performing arts fund NEUSTART KULTUR in 2022 and has been touring ever since.
Catalina Tello Aranguiz (CHL)
ENSEMBLE
Catalina was born in Chile, and has lived in Berlin since 2019. She is a multidisciplinary artist who has trained mainly as a professional dancer and circus artist in aerial arts. The focus of her artistic work is on research, improvisation and creation, mixing contemporary dance and aerial acrobatics. She is an artist who is always looking to keep learning, so she is constantly attending workshops in areas that interest her.
Martha Kröger (DEU)
ENSEMBLE (dancer, artist, actress, dance therapist)
Martha Kröger is a freelance performing artist with a degree in Physical Theater (CH) and Dance Movement Therapy (ESP), born and rooted in Berlin. She has been working as a dancer, actress, dramaturge and mediator throughout Germany and internationally since 2014. She performed throughout Europe under Volker Hesse from 2014 to 2017. Since 2016, she has been a member of the Maraña company for contemporary circus, whose latest piece “ORGANISMO” premiered in 2022. Since 2018, she has been working internationally as a mediator, choreographer and performer with a focus on inclusion and non-verbal communication, mainly in Barcelona with Jodie Cortez and as part of the contwedancecollective (BY). Last year, the two dance theater pieces “Ode to Things” and “Social – a digital dive”, for cross-generational audiences, won awards in Bavaria for the former and in Berlin for the latter. With the DIS-TANZ-SOLO, the research for dance film and archiving of memory “ERINNERUNGSFORMEN” was initiated as the starting point for her first solo production. In 2023, the solo production “Collapsing Beautifully” was realized with a residency at Con.Bamberg (BY).
Kristina-Anne Francisco (USA)
ENSEMBLE (artist, dancer)
Kristina is a freelance performance artist. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Florida (2010) and is a graduate of the professional contemporary circus program at Die Etage Performing Arts School in Berlin (2019).
She works extensively with stilt theater, including with the ensembles Dulce Compania (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Croatia, 2017 – present), Troupe de la Lumiere (Germany, 2022 – present) and Wise Fool (New Mexico, Florida, Michigan, 2016-2017).
She has performed on stage with the Berliner Ensemble (Die Kinder des Paradieses, 2018). In film, she appeared as a stilt dancer in Selim El Sadek’s Money-y (2022) and as the title character in Abdelrahmen Dnewar’s Death to Geckos (2023). She has been a member of Maraña since 2022 and performed as an aerialist and dancer in the interdisciplinary circus show Organismo and as an aerialist in the performance installation Viento.
ELLI BERGER (DEU)
ENSEMBLE (Artist, aerialist, dancer
Elli is a Berlin-based freelance artist in the fields of circus, dance, music and performance art. She studied circus at the school for performing arts “Die Etage” Berlin (1017-2019) and at INAC (Instituto Nacional de Artes do Circo) in Portugal (2019-2021), specializing in vertical rope. In 2021, she worked on projects in the field of new circus under the direction of Jorge Lix and Antonio Oliveira and collaborated with Cristina Leitão and Sandra Salomé for contemporary dance and physical theater formats. She has participated in site-specific performances in Porto (Pt) and Cologne (De) in collaboration with Lucia Nordhoff, supported by fAUNA – habitat de criacao, Famalicao. She is part of the ensemble Maraña under the direction of Paula Riquelme and has been involved in the production Organismo since 2022.
ANDRES ARAVENA (CHL)
Music production and live music (music producer, composer, multi-instrumentalist and DJ).
His beginnings in music started over 2 decades ago while exploring African rhythms at the same time he was interested in electronic sounds.
All this accompanied by a great interest in nature and endless experiences traveling around South America exploring its sounds, human beings and ecosystems until he settled in the deep nature of southern Chile to enter his studio and create his solo project “Andi.Andean”
After his creations began to appear on various labels worldwide, and he performed in many important festivals in South America and Europe, he settled in Berlin where he continues to create music, collaborate with performance and audiovisual immersive projects, giving concerts, Dj sets, rhythm workshops and keeps pushing the possibilities of music and creativity.
A foot appears, followed by a leg, then another. They move, stretch, loll carefully to underwater sounds. Do they belong together? Somewhere hands appear, groping and spreading their fingers. There are more and more of them, and here, too, one can wonder to whom or what they belong. These extremities are almost no longer human, but belong to an interwoven, giant being that has no beginning and no end, that breathes and lives and dances - and is made of wool.