Rafaela Sahyoun is a Latin American artist from Brazil of Arab heritage, with Lebanese and Palestinian roots, who lives between São Paulo and international locations. Working across dance, choreography, and education, she moves fluidly through relational, performative settings and context-specific co-creations. Her teaching practice is shaped by a grounded pedagogical framework for dance, continually evolving through research and facilitation.
Her work has reached undergraduate and postgraduate programs, professional companies, cultural centers, and a range of artistic platforms. Since 2019, she has taught at PERA School of Performing Arts in Northern Cyprus, leading contemporary technique, improvisation, and composition projects. Over the past six years, she has also worked as a guest choreographer, creating annual pieces, most recently The Trouble is Wildly Wet (2024).
In addition to her studies in Brazil, Rafaela trained in dance in New York City before moving to London in 2019 to complete a degree in Dance Studies at Trinity Laban Centre for Movement and Dance. She later continued her education at SEAD Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance in Austria, graduating in 2013. Since then, she has studied somatic practices extensively, which remain central to her approach as an educator, and she is currently studying Somatic Therapy with the Inner Balance Method.
She was also part of the Atlas – Create Your Dance Trails program at ImpulsTanz 2023, under the mentorship of Mélanie Demers and Angélique Willkie. As a performer, she has been active since 2012, working with dance companies and independent productions in Brazil, while also collaborating with international choreographers abroad.
As a choreographer, Fôlego (2022) was her first creation for the acclaimed Balé da Cidade de São Paulo. The work was nominated for the 2022 APCA Dance Award in the Best Premiere category and has toured in Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, and France. In 2025, she created BOCA ABISSAL, her second work for the company. Both pieces are now part of the company’s current repertoire and are featured together as a double bill in a tour across five French cities, including Théâtre de la Ville in Paris and Maison de la Danse in Lyon.
In 2025, she also launched ELETRO-RAIA, a dance company developed through years of collaborative research and creation. Its first work, CRUSH, began as a research process in 2022 and premiered in 2024 at the PERFORMdANCE Festival at ARGEkultur in Salzburg, Austria. It was later presented in Portugal in co-production with Teatro Alba in Aveiro, and premiered in Brazil in 2025 at SESC Ipiranga in São Paulo. In 2026, C R U S H will be included in CROSSOVER, a program by the Ballet National de Marseille under the direction of (LA) HORDE.