Rafaela Sahyoun, a Latin American artist from Brazil of Arab descent — Lebanese and Palestinian, lives between São Paulo and international territories, working as a dancer, choreographer, and educator. She navigates these roles through the relational landscapes of performative practices and context-driven co-creations.

As an educator, she has developed a grounded pedagogical framework for dance practices, continuously unfolding through research and facilitation. Her work spans undergraduate and postgraduate programs, professional companies, cultural centers, and other artistic platforms. Since 2019, Rafaela has taught at PERA School of Performing Arts (Northern Cyprus), guiding contemporary technique, improvisation, and composition projects. As a guest choreographer over the past six years, she has created annual works, most recently The Trouble is Wildly Wet (2024).

Besides Brazil, she studied dance in NYC then moved to London in 2019 to complete a degree in Dance Studies at Trinity Laban Centre for Movement and Dance. She then continued her studies at SEAD Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance in Austria, graduating in 2013. Since then, she has extensively studied somatic practices, which form a foundation of her pedagogical approach, and is currently studying Somatic Therapy with the Inner Balance Method. She was part of the Atlas – Create Your Dance Trails program at ImpulsTanz 2023, mentored by Mélanie Demers and Angélique Willkie.

As a performer, she has been working since 2012, integrating dance companies and independent productions in Brazil, as well as collaborating with international choreographers abroad.

As a choreographer , Fôlego (2022) marked her first creation for the renowned Balé da Cidade de São Paulo. The piece was nominated for the 2022 APCA Dance Award in the category of Best Premiere and has toured in Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, and France. In 2025 she created BOCA ABISSAL, her second work for the company. Both creations are part of the company’s current repertoire and featured in the tour program across five French cities, including the prestigious Théâtre de la Ville in Paris and the Maison de la Danse in Lyon, presented together as a double bill of her works.

In 2025 she launched ELETRO-RAIA, a dance company conceived over years of collaborative research and creation. The inaugural work of the collective is CRUSH, a research initiated in 2022 and premiered in 2024 at the PERFORMdANCE Festival at ARGEkultur in Salzburg, Austria, later presented in Portugal in co-production with Teatro Alba in Aveiro. In 2025 it premiered in Brazil at SESC Ipiranga in São Paulo.

In 2026, C R U S H will be part of CROSSOVER, a program by the Ballet National de Marseille under the direction of (LA) HORDE. For this unique program, (LA)HORDE aims to bring together three pairs of choreographers to stage a series of artistic encounters on stage, taking the form of crossover. At the heart of CROSSOVER lies a process of interweaving: a layering of two pre-existing works, fragments of iconic pieces, whose respective choreographers are invited to explore together, through dialogue and discussion, the intersections where their aesthetics meet and intertwine. This process engages the artists in a game of reinterpretation of their own repertoire through the lens of a shared stage, creating a third dimension where the works overlap without dissolving.

Other choreographic works are:
“The Trouble is Wildly Wet”(2024); “NINGUÉMMESOLTA [Don’t Lose Me]” (2018-2023); “Yeah, I’ve Been Watching You Lately” (2023); “Something to Phase Us: who goes there” (2022); “Wheel of Radical Affection” (2021); “VAWM” (2020); “Pequenos Atos Para Desacostumar” (2014).