Rebecca Livaniou is a dancer, choreographer, and performer with a background in hip-hop. Since 2011, she has expanded her work to include choreography, teaching, and international collaborations. Her recent projects focus on exploring how performance anxiety, mindfulness, and the transformation of energy through improvisation affect both the body and mind. She has led and participated in global cultural exchanges, including Souls of Freedom (2023), and her solo performance InTension won the Best Emerging Artist Award at Stockholm Fringe Festival 2024. Rebecca has also taught as a guest at institutions like Åsa Folkhögskola and SKH, and has worked with renowned choreographers and dance productions such as Cullberg and Lisa Janbell.
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Email: livaniourebecca@gmail.com
What does the SITE residency enable you to do?
– The SITE residency would provide me with the time and resources to deepen my creative work and artistic practice, allowing me to focus on ongoing projects and push my exploration further.
What are you working on right now?
– Currently, I am focused on developing my choreographic solo InTension. The work explores performing under pressure, examining the emotional and physical states that emerge in high-stress environments. Drawing from the hip-hop battle scene and other high-intensity performance contexts, InTension investigates how fear, anxiety, and stress manifest in the body, and how these feelings influence movement and expression.
The piece centers on finding strategies to navigate these internal states, aiming for clarity, grounding, and emotional availability in both performance and daily life. The process incorporates breath, sensory focus, and repetition as tools to foster presence and openness. The movement vocabulary is rooted in street and freestyle dance, influenced by both East African and Swedish cultural contexts.
Additionally, I’m involved in a newly formed association dedicated to supporting and empowering subcultures and exploring innovative concepts to increase cultural accessibility. These ongoing projects are central to my current practice, and I’m keen to continue developing them.
How would you like to further develop during your residency at SITE?
During the residency, I plan to deepen my creative ideas and transform them into tangible results. I’ll focus on developing a long-term strategy for my artistic career, setting clear goals, and outlining future projects. An important part of this process will be learning how to navigate funding and grant application systems more effectively, which will enable me to sustain and grow my creative practice.