Dancer-choreographer-teacher
Nastia Dontsova
| About Nastia Dontsova is a dancer, choreographer, artistic director, and teacher based in Barcelona. She trained in dance at the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia in Saint Petersburg, where she earned a degree in Performance and Pedagogy, and continued her professional training at La Faktoria Choreographic Center in Pamplona. Full CV As a performer, she has worked and collaborated with choreographers and companies such as Daniel Abreu, Carmen Larraz, Laida Aldaz, Mari Paula, and FC Bergman, among others. Her first creation, Echoes of Home (2023), a solo piece exploring the experience of migration, was presented at various festivals and platforms across Catalonia and Spain. The work also received the Premio Jurado at the Territori en Dansa 2025. In 2025, together with dancer Cecilia Franceschelli, she founded her own company, which debuted with the short-format piece La Gravedad de un Abrazo, an exploration of human relationships. Alongside her artistic career, Nastia has a strong interest in pedagogy and has actively developed her teaching practice in recent years through classes and workshops in Spain and internationally. Her approach focuses on sharing tools that open pathways for exploring one’s own dance through softness, listening, and presence. The work moves from the subtle to the highly physical, seeking fluidity within an available body through floor work, body expression, and partner work. She also collaborates with NunArt, an artistic center in Barcelona that offers professional training for dancers and artistic residencies. Nastia understands dance as a space where performance, creation, and teaching continuously nourish one another. Her work is characterized by deep artistic sensitivity, combined with determination and an ongoing search for new forms of research and expression. Ph: Eva Voinorovich |
Videos
Movement expression is one of the main interests in Nastia's work. She uses the body as a vehicle to explore different physical qualities and generate images that become seeds for ideas in her creations.
Her first creation, Echoes of Home (2024), which explores the experience of migration, premiered at the Barceloneta Civic Center and has been presented at festivals such as Tudanzas, Stripart, and L’Aparador, among others. This solo also received the Jury Prize at the Territori en Dansa 2025 competition.
In 2025, Nastia began collaborating and developing work with Cecilia Franceschelli. Together, they created their first small-format piece for unconventional spaces, La gravedad de un abrazo.
The synergy between the two artists is built upon a shared language rooted in contact, listening, and sensitivity.
Her first creation, Echoes of Home (2024), which explores the experience of migration, premiered at the Barceloneta Civic Center and has been presented at festivals such as Tudanzas, Stripart, and L’Aparador, among others. This solo also received the Jury Prize at the Territori en Dansa 2025 competition.
In 2025, Nastia began collaborating and developing work with Cecilia Franceschelli. Together, they created their first small-format piece for unconventional spaces, La gravedad de un abrazo.
The synergy between the two artists is built upon a shared language rooted in contact, listening, and sensitivity.
Near
Near is a 7-minute duo created in collaboration with Olga Ogorodnikova. It was presented at the "Bye Bye Ballet Center" in 2019 and at the Festival of Contemporary Dance "Sdvig" in Kirov, Russia in 2020.
"It's so important to have support. It's crucial to have someone who will be there with you, supporting and guiding you. This work was born as a token of gratitude for our meeting with each other."
Direction, creation and interpretation: Olga Ogorodnikova, Nastia Dontsova
Duration: 7 minutes
With the support of: Bye Bye Ballet center
"It's so important to have support. It's crucial to have someone who will be there with you, supporting and guiding you. This work was born as a token of gratitude for our meeting with each other."
Direction, creation and interpretation: Olga Ogorodnikova, Nastia Dontsova
Duration: 7 minutes
With the support of: Bye Bye Ballet center
Echoes of Home
When home is no longer a place but a feeling, how do we find our space in the world?
Echoes of Home is a 15-minute contemporary dance solo created for street and unconventional spaces, as well as for the stage.
This solo immerses us in the emotional journey of those who live between two realities. Echoes of Home creates a space for reflection on the experience of emigration, sharing with the audience the strength and fragility that accompany it. A piece that deeply resonates with the process of losing and rediscovering a sense of home, and the search for identity.
Direction, creation and interpretation: Nastia Dontsova
Сostume design: Marta Casado Vendrellg
External eye: Lorenana Gargno, Clémentine Telesfort
Duration: 15 minutes
With the support of: Nau Ivanow, Civics Centres Barceloneta, Teixonera, El Sortidor, Сan Clariana Cultural
Videos: Herman Allimant, Miguel Álvarez
Edition: Nastia Dontsova
Echoes of Home is a 15-minute contemporary dance solo created for street and unconventional spaces, as well as for the stage.
This solo immerses us in the emotional journey of those who live between two realities. Echoes of Home creates a space for reflection on the experience of emigration, sharing with the audience the strength and fragility that accompany it. A piece that deeply resonates with the process of losing and rediscovering a sense of home, and the search for identity.
Direction, creation and interpretation: Nastia Dontsova
Сostume design: Marta Casado Vendrellg
External eye: Lorenana Gargno, Clémentine Telesfort
Duration: 15 minutes
With the support of: Nau Ivanow, Civics Centres Barceloneta, Teixonera, El Sortidor, Сan Clariana Cultural
Videos: Herman Allimant, Miguel Álvarez
Edition: Nastia Dontsova
La Gravedad de un Abrazo
La gravedad de un abrazo is a dance duet for unconventional spaces that explores contact and its extremes, where two bodies search for each other, shape one another, and are mutually affected.
The piece investigates the boundaries between closeness and distance, love and pain, elasticity and rupture: how contact transforms, invites adaptation, and, at times, wounds.
Through movement, a plastic, fragile, and ever-changing relationship is revealed to the audience—one that reflects the complexity of human connections.
Direction, creation and interpretation: Cia. Cecilia Franceschelli i Nastia Dontsova
Сostume design: Marta Casado Vendrell
External eye: Lorenana Gargno
Duration: 20 minutes
With the support of: Nau Ivanow, Civics Centres Teixonera, El Sortidor
Photos: Aurélie Veyrat
The piece investigates the boundaries between closeness and distance, love and pain, elasticity and rupture: how contact transforms, invites adaptation, and, at times, wounds.
Through movement, a plastic, fragile, and ever-changing relationship is revealed to the audience—one that reflects the complexity of human connections.
Direction, creation and interpretation: Cia. Cecilia Franceschelli i Nastia Dontsova
Сostume design: Marta Casado Vendrell
External eye: Lorenana Gargno
Duration: 20 minutes
With the support of: Nau Ivanow, Civics Centres Teixonera, El Sortidor
Photos: Aurélie Veyrat
Floor work and Improvisation
classes
classes
These classes are focused on exploring movement in all its forms. The aim is to expand the body’s possibilities by paying attention both to our inner landscape and the space around us. I would like to share tools that open doors to exploring one’s own dance through softness and attentive listening. We will work with bodily sensitivity and physicality to enrich our movement. The exploration will take place individually, in pairs, and in groups, allowing joy and play to guide the process.
This workshop is open to people from diverse backgrounds who are interested in movement as a form of expression, exploration, and connection.
Photos and video: Natalia Krivtsova
Edition: Nastia Dontsova
