Volmir Cordeiro

Volmir Cordeiro is a Brazilian dancer, choreographer, teacher and researcher born in 1987, whose career stands at the intersection of artistic creation and pedagogy. Initially trained in theatre in Brazil, he quickly turned to contemporary dance, collaborating with several major figures of the Brazilian scene, including Lia Rodrigues, Alejandro Ahmed and Cristina Moura. These early experiences shaped an approach to the body already marked by attention to social dynamics and forms of expression situated on the margins.

Settling in France from 2011, he continued his training at the Centre national de danse contemporaine d’Angers under the direction of Emmanuelle Huynh, where he developed a rigorous practice that is both physical and conceptual. Alongside his work as a performer — notably with Xavier Le Roy, Lâtifa Laâbissi, Robyn Orlin and Rodrigo Garcia — he pursued academic research that led him to defend a thesis at Université Paris 8. This theoretical work, devoted to figures of marginality in contemporary dance, deeply informs his entire artistic approach.

His first choreographic creations took the form of a cycle of solos — Ciel (2012), Inês (2014) and Rue (2015) — in which he explores bodily presences that are often made invisible, at the borders of the social and the political. Through these pieces, Volmir Cordeiro affirms a singular writing, traversed by a raw physical intensity and an attention to unstable, porous, transforming states of the body. His work then evolved toward collective forms, such as L’œil, la bouche et le reste (2017), Trottoir (2019), Métropole (2021), Érosion (2022, for Les Ballets de Lorraine) and Abri (2023), in which the group becomes a space of tension, circulation and reconfiguration of identities.

In 2018 he founded the company Donna Volcan, conceived as a place of research and creation where an aesthetic of emergence and metamorphosis unfolds. His more recent works, such as Parterre (2025) and Cher Fou (2026–27), extend this exploration by articulating bodily energy, popular imaginaries and cultural heritages. His choreographic gesture asserts itself as an act that is at once poetic and political, attentive to forms of resistance and to the powers of appearance of bodies.

Volmir Cordeiro also develops an extensive teaching and transmission practice in numerous international institutions. The publication of his book Ex-Corpo (Éditions Carnets, CND, 2019) prolongs his reflection on the margins and on the place of the body in contemporary practices. His work, now recognized on the international scene, bears witness to a deep commitment to dance conceived as a critical space, capable of bringing forth other narratives, other presences and other ways of inhabiting the world.

He has been distinguished in particular by the SACD “Jeune Talent Chorégraphie” Prize in 2021, which saluted the originality and engagement of his artistic approach. He is regularly invited and supported by leading institutions such as the Centre national de la danse, La Briqueterie CDCN du Val-de-Marne, and Points communs – Nouvelle scène nationale de Cergy-Pontoise et du Val d’Oise, where he was an associate artist. These institutional collaborations testify to the lasting inscription of his work in the landscape of contemporary creation in France and Europe, as well as to the recognition of his contribution to current choreographic research.

In 2026, Volmir Cordeiro becomes associate artist at the Master Exerce, Agora – CCN Montpellier.

From January 2027, he is associate artist at the CCN de Tours.