Dance Nexus community: People
Raquel Nevado Ramos - Founder
Raquel Nevado Ramos comes from Granada (ES). Studied at the Conservatiorio profesional de danza ‘Reina Sofia’, Granada, as well as BA ‘Contemporary Dance and Pedagogy’ in Linz (AT). She has worked with Daniel Morales, Ángel Rodríguez, Theater Pforzheim, Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern, Hui Tran, Nadia Beugré, Ester Ambrosino, Johannes Schropp, Tomas Bünger, a.o.
She is currently based in Wiesbaden as a dance freelancer. She recently started choreographing. She is part of the collective “Air Italics”.
Johannes Schropp - Founder
Johannes studied BA Composition and MA Choreography & Performance. His work expands in the spacetime between various disciplines, approaches and theory, that almost meditatively search for realities that are hidden beyond what is concretely audible, visible, tangible and articulable.
In the collective Air italics he works towards an interdisciplinary practice, interweaving the practices of choreography and composition to explore genuinely interdisciplinary formats and working methods.
He also composes music for dance and performance productions, works as a stage director and filmmaker for music theatre and innovative concert forms and as a dramaturge in the field of dance.
Juan Camilo Rojas Arevalo - Founding member
Juan Camilo Rojas Arévalo was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and holds a postgraduate degree in Performing Arts with a specialization in dance. After completing his studies, he participated in various stage projects both in Colombia and abroad while dedicating himself to dance pedagogy. In 2023, he moved to Germany and has since been working as a freelancer on multiple projects, including collaborations with the Frankfurt Oper, Koln Oper, Tanzmainz, and other artistic spaces.
Matthew Tusa - Founding member
Born in Melbourne, Matthew graduated from the Australian Ballet School with an Advanced Diploma of Dance. He enjoyed a successful 14-year career as a professional dancer with companies such as the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, The Royal Swedish Ballet, and Ballet Madrid, and was a soloist with HBS. After retiring, he transitioned to teaching and choreography, collaborating with dance companies, such as the Milwaukee Ballet and Landestheater Linz as well as staging his own dance projects. Drawing on his extensive knowledge he teaches students of all ages, emphasizing authenticity, precision and musicality to foster self-expression and confidence.
Jeremy Curnier - Founding member
Born in the UK, Jeremy began ballet at 4, before graduating from the Royal Ballet School in 2009. He earned his first contract with Northern Ballet, performing lead roles in productions such as Swan Lake, 1984, and The Nutcracker. In 2017, Jeremy continued his career with Ballett Kiel before moving to Tanzcompagnie Gießen, where he transitioned to contemporary repertoire. Alongside his dance career, Jeremy is a certified Mental Performance Coach and is pursuing a Bachelor’s in Psychology. Jeremy continues to be a freelance artist, movement director, coach, and ballet teacher.
Laura Ahumada Garcia - Founding member
South American performer, improviser, and educator completing her Master’s (MACoDE) in Frankfurt. A 2019 London Contemporary Dance School graduate, Laura has worked with Divadlo Studio Tanca, Ultima Vez, and others. In 2021, she trained in Flying Low & Passing Through with David Zambrano.
Her work blends silliness, spontaneity, and Latin fire, fostering togetherness in dance. Teaching since 2019, she has led classes at Ponderosa, Urbanraum, Tanz Fabrik, Dock 11, LCDS, TanzPlattform Rhein-Main, and more. She currently teaches Capoeira at HfMDK, Frankfurt.
Mareike Buchmann - Founding member
Mareike is a freelance dance and performance artist as well as a movement researcher. Her work interweaves artistic practice with philosophical inquiry. For over ten years, she has been developing her own productions. In 2022, she founded the IDA FLUX Ensemble and SYMSOMA, a movement philosophy focusing on dance and somatic exploration. She holds a PhD from the Paris Lodron University Salzburg / Mozarteum of science and art, on the topic “Körper/Spuren/Spüren – find your way around movement.” Alongside, she has been teaching for many years with a focus on somatic and performative practices.
Verena Wilhelm - Founding member
Verena Wilhelm is a contemporary dancer and dance teacher. She completed her dance studies in Berlin and has since worked with various choreographers in the independent theatre scene, as well as making guest appearances at Schauspiel Stuttgart and NTM Mannheim. She is a prizewinner of the Stuttgart Solo Dance Theatre Festival. For some years now, her focus has increasingly been on dance education, and in 2024 she completed her master's degree in dance education at the Palucca University of Dance to deepen this new direction.
Yi-Lun Chen-Czajor - Founding member
I am a freelance dance educator, DanceAbility teacher, movement facilitator and performer with a background in theater studies, dance pedagogy, and social work. My work focuses on inclusive and socially engaged dance, creating spaces where movement fosters connection and transformation.
As an active member of Dance Nexus, I explore contemporary dance as a tool for empowerment, expression, and inclusion.
Lena Kunz - Founding member
I am a performance artist interested in spaces where performance, poetics and politics intertwine. My transdisciplinary practice combines performance, dance, writing, (non-linear) storytelling, sound, installation and theory.
Currently I am researching on bodies and their (hi)stories that are intertwined with the threads of their heritage, kinships and environment(s). I also perform with the IDA FLUX Ensemble, work as a dramaturge for contemporary dance and teach movement improvisation and creative writing.
Santiago Mariño
I am a dance artist from Bogotá, Colombia, currently living in Germany. As a performer, I am trained in contemporary
dance, classical ballet, acrobatics, and improvisation technologies. I seek deep embodied and anatomical
understandings of technique and movement qualities. As a choreographer, I deal with perspectives of migration, the
embodied experience of marginalized communities (folks of color, queer people, and class divisions), and embodied
memory as a source of wisdom, hybridization, and ancestral heritages. As a teacher, I seek to transgress the
heteronormativity, homogenizing, and colonial structures of dance transmission and cultivate processes of
communality, joy, and inner work.
Ronja Eick - Founding member
Ronja Eick is a dancer and dance teacher currently based in Mainz, Germany. She studied Music and Dance Education in Salzburg and Contemporary Dance Education in Frankfurt. In her master's thesis, she researched the topic of consent in contemporary dance practices.
Since 2018, she has been teaching contemporary dance, offering diverse community dance classes and organizing interdisciplinary jam sessions. Ronja often combines elements of floorwork and (contact) improvisation in her teaching. In her artistic work, she experiments with concepts that explore endurance.
Pihla Jaala - Member
She is a dancer, educator and social worker from Finland. She lives in Frankfurt am Main and completed her (MA CoDE) at the HfMDK Frankfurt in 2025. In Finland, she studied social sciences and social work at the University of Eastern Finland, graduating with a master's degree in 2020. She then studied contemporary dance at the North Carelia Education Consortium Outokumpu and finished her dance education in 2023. During her studies at MA CoDE, Pihla has focused on questions of access and inclusion in dance pedagogy. Rooted in contemporary dance, she seeks an awareness of the body as a complex structure and creative resource through improvisation and somatic movement research. Artistically she is curious about the body's ability to embody images and communicate experiences. Pihla is passionate about interdisciplinary collaboration to create sustainable and accessible communities and explore togetherness in artistic and pedagogical processes.
Lisa von Eichel-Streiber - Member
Lisa von Eichel-Streiber is a contemporary dancer and dance teacher who studied dance and dance dissemination at CCD cologne (HfmT Köln). She is based in the rural area around Bad
Kreuznach and is working on giving contemporary dance space and visibility besides the urban environment. Together with Sarah Petry she is creating Tanz aus dem Raum a platform to let contemporary dance give impulses for encounter and cultural participation in the rural area.
She is teaching in several public schools and kitas, offers regular courses and workshops for kids, families and people all ages, organises guest performances und is currently creating her own artistic works in dialogue with different artsist and artforms.
Meilyn Kennedy - Member
Meilyn began her training in ballet before expanding into broader movement studies at the Arts Umbrella Dance Graduate Program (2017-2019) and then as a member of the HSB (2019-2025). She has created three works for the company dancers, shown in dancer-led and curated evenings and participated as a member of Move2Reach, a dancer- initiated outreach non-profit organization. Currently, she is also continuing her academic education in a B.Sc. Psychology with a minor in Sociology. Currently, she is a freelancer, with her research and interest lying in dissecting, understanding and critiquing social structures, ideas, norms and hierarchies that affect everyday life, the art form, and therefore the product. She is deeply interested as art as a way of communicating and bringing people together in the simplest of forms in ways of time spent together, outreach, and bringing art to a public and accessible space.
Ioulia Kokkokiou - Founding member
Ioulia is a performer, dance educator, and researcher. She completed her Master’s degree (MA CoDE, Frankfurt) and has since worked as a dance educator and artist with various dance, social, and cultural institutions (Mousonturm and the State Theater in Wiesbaden.)
Ioulia draws inspiration from different artistic media, philosophy, and science, with her main pedagogical goal being the cultivation of body, movement, and group awareness. Her latest movement research, supported by DIS-TANZ SOLO, investigates how movement games can support the teaching of contemporary dance at a young age.
As a performer, she primarily collaborates with the following choreographers: Matthew Tusa, Verena Kutschera, Rena Papadopoulou, and Grace Euna Kim.
Sarah Petry - Member
Sarah Petry has bee educated in various places and institutions to grow as a contemporary dance artist and dance facilitator.
In 2012 she began freelancing in Bremen while completing her M.A. in Dance Culture at DSHS Köln.
She works in public schools and day-care centres, with parents and their children, and realises stage projects with diverse groups. She enjoys creating for young audiences as well as collaborating across different art forms.
In 2023 she and her family returned to her roots in the rural area near Mainz. Together with her colleague Lisa von Eichel, she founded the platform 'Tanz aus dem Raum' to make contemporary dance art visible in the rural regions of Rheinland-Pfalz.
Paige Perry - Member
Paige Perry was born in the USA. She received her ballet training in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and her first engagement was with the Milwaukee Ballet. After a two-year engagement with the Hartford Ballet, she joined the Hamburg Ballet under John Neumeier. After almost five years with the Hamburg Ballet, she returned to the USA, where she became a member of the San Francisco Opera Ballet. At the same time, she became a founding member of the LINES Dance Company under Alonso King.
Five years later (and after the birth of her first two children), she moved back to Europe, where she initially worked as a soloist with the Ulm Ballet. Later, she moved to the Wiesbaden State Theater as a principal dancer.
After retiring from her active dance career, Paige Perry completed training as a dance and stage teacher at the State University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt, from which she graduated with a diploma.
From 2000 to 2022, Paige Perry directed the Wiesbaden Ballet Academy.
