
Andrea Catania
Costa Rica, Performer
Andrea Catania is a Costarican dancer, actress and choreographer who started her career in her home town of San José when she was 5 years old with the famed Uruguayan ballet teacher Cristina Gigirey. At the same time she started receiving acting classes with Maria Catania, her aunt and a renowned children’s theatre teacher in the region. When she turns 17, she joined the National Dance Company’s Youth Group, directed by Mimi Gonzalez. In 1996 Andrea was asked to join “Losdenmedium” Contemporary Dance Company directed by Jimmy Ortiz, at the time, the most prolific and experimental dance company in Central America. This 5 year long experience ignited in her the desire to become a choreographer in her own right.
She continued the search for her own voice with a passage as an exchange student at the CNDC in Anger, France in 1998, before joining the student body group at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen, Germany, institution from which she graduated in 2003. She has also graduated from the National University of Costa Rica in Performing Arts/Dance. Throughout her career she has collaborated with such artists as: Juan Kruz de Garaio Esnaola, Luc Dunberry, Stephanie Tiersch and Joachim Schlomer. Her own prize-winning choreographies have been met with great reviews and enthusiasm in Spain, Germany and her native Costa Rica.