Safia Highlights:
• Ballerina, dance teacher and director of Porto Alegre Dance Company.
• Graduated in classical ballet with improvement for two years at the State School of Classical Ballet in Kiev, ex-Soviet Union.
• Performance in the National Ballet of Cuba and Ballet de Camaguey for two years.
• Studied modern dance in New York at the Trisha Brown Company and Movement Research.
• Creator of Biostretch, a system that integrates somatic education and dance techniques.

SAFIA TÂNIA BAUMANN is a german brasilian dancer. She joined the João Luiz Rolla School, in Porto Alegre, under the guidance of his orthopedist who suggested the practice of ballet to adjust the position of the feet turned inwards. Gradually from a necessity it became a great passion. The child became an applied student who won attendance awards every year at school, a delight that Master Rolla offered to his most dedicated students. Safia remembers Mrs. Rolla with a lot of affection and admiration. The enthusiasm he exuded for the art of dance would influence and be fundamental to her future career as a dancer.

Safia graduated in 1982 winning first place in the final exams. The newly formed ballerina started to look for classes with different teachers in the city, like Tony Seitz Petzhold and Walter Arias, with whom she had her first contact with the Vaganova method, the Russian ballet school. For a while, she danced in some local companies and started teaching, giving dance lessons to children.

When she finished high school the only thought was about dancing and traveling the world and she was determined to go in search of her dreams. She packed her bags and with the full support of her parents, she moved to Rio do Janeiro city where she would seek to deepen her studies in ballet. There she began to attend daily classes at the renowned school of Eugenia Feodorova and also became a Flavio Sampaio’s student at the Nora Esteves Dance School. This time in her words, was very inspiring. Tânia reports she was able to attend major international dance companies at the Municipal Theater and this encouraged her to seek ways to pursue her studies abroad. Her greatest desire was to get to know the Russian school where names like Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov came from, exponents of the ballet world that she had already the opportunity to watch on stage.

In late 1988, Safia received a scholarship to complement her studies at the State School of Classical Ballet in Kiev, Ukraine. There she stayed for almost two years receiving daily classes in ballet, acting, folk dance, repertoire and pas de deux, in addition to Russian idiom and music classes. During this period, with all the support offered to a dance student in USSR, she had the chance to delve deeper into the Vaganova method, to attend theaters in Kiev, Saint Petersburg and Moscow and to watch large assemblies of the ballet repertoire. It was, as she recognizes, a unique opportunity to live in a country with a different political system and different values; and where art and culture have a special importance. Above all, it was an extraordinary life experience.

She returned to Brazil in 1990 and already in 1993 she embarked to Cuba for professional development. Her passage through the Ballet de Camaguey and Ballet Nacional de Cuba allowed her to learn about the adaptations of the Vaganova method that resulted in the Cuban ballet school. She says that it was two years of intense contact with other Cuban artists: painters, sculptors, musicians, theater directors and cinema aficionados.

This experience would expand her horizons in dance inaugurating a new stage in her artistic career. She felt the desire to expand her dance beyond the ballet repertoire and experience new challenges as a dancer. She started looking for new possibilities for expression and in 1994 she joined the Terpsí Teatro de Dança Company where remained until 2007. In this company, she participated in several spectacles, in addition to coordinating several projects in Brazil and abroad; and acting as a ballet teacher. There, her first steps were literally in a world other than classical ballet and a unique opportunity to develop her skills as an interpreter, further than fairies, peasants, swans and princesses.

In 1997 she got a scholarship from CAPES – Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel and Ministry of Culture of Brazil (MINC) in the first year of the project APARTES, Program of Improvement in Arts Abroad offered for young artists. She studied modern dance, Release technique, during one year in New York city at Trisha Brown Company and Movement Research. In this period, in addition to specializing in dance, she had her first experiments with different Somatic Education techniques.

In 2000 she was invited to participate as a dancer, along with other dancers and exponents of the music of Rio Grande do Sul, in the spectacle made especially to represent the Rio Grande do Sul in the Expo 2000 in Hannover, Germany. Simultaneously with her professional development as a dancer, Safia continued to act as a dance teacher, both for adults and children, including in social projects. She fondly recalls when she worked with children as a dance teacher of the Decentralization Project of Culture, from the Municipality of Porto Alegre, in 2004. At that time, she was studying Literature at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul – UFRGS, where she would graduate in 2013, developing another passion that accompanied her since childhood, literature.

It was during this graduation, more precisely in 2005, that a new challenge arose. She was invited to act in a Dance Company not as a dancer, but behind the scenes. She moved to Salvador, hired as a Choreography Assistant at the Ballet Company of Teatro Castro Alves, in Bahia. It was a period of enormous learning and a transformative experience. Coordinating technicians during local shows and in Germany during the Company’s tour,

Safia was also responsible for the rehearsals and taught ballet classes for the company. At the same time, according to her, she tried to preserve her daily exercise discipline, always looking for new techniques to maintain her fitness. At this time she met Gyrotonic, a body technique created by the Romanian dancer Juliu Horvat. She fell in love with the method and ended up doing the training to became an instructor. Since then she have been working as a body therapist not only with dancers, but with different people interested in physical development.

In 2007, as the last project within Companhia Terpsí, she did a training as an Educator at Teatro Escola Brincante, directed by Antônio Nóbrega. She was already participating in a movement in her city, which called for the emergence of a Dance Company of the city, an old dream of the community.

That same year, together with personalities from the artistic and cultural environment of the city, she created PORTO ALEGRE CIA DE DANÇA, which had its debut in March 2008 at Theatro São Pedro. She was invited to be the director of the Company in recognition of her career and international experience. One of the highlights in the Company’s trajectory was its international debut in 2010, when a tour of German cities took place: Wuppertal, Münster, Mülheim and Krefeld.

Currently, in addition to directing the Company, she is also dedicated to developing educational projects by teaching classical ballet and modern dance classes, offering different workshops and classes for professional dancers, as well as dance lovers of all levels. 

Safia created Biostretch, an exercise system inspired by Somatic Education and her experiences with different dance techniques. She has also held individual and group body awareness sessions in different places as Brasil, Norway, Germany and Chile, including meditation retreats, a practice she has been developing since 2011.