Leila Marie Patzies
2024
Emerging artist
Leila Marie Patzies is one of the emerging artists selected to preview her solo piece "Why Death Was Just Death" during one of the CORA side event nights. The german dancer has been recognized for her figurative works, blending realism with introspective themes.
BIO
Leila Marie Patzies is a Berlin-based freelance dancer, choreographer, and teacher. She studied contemporary dance at Iwanson International in Munich and continued her training with Varium in Barcelona and CobosMika Company Seeds in Girona. In autumn 2026, she will begin her Master’s degree in Choreography at Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH).
Her artistic practice integrates improvisation, somatic research, partnering, and interdisciplinary collaboration. During her professional development, she participated twice in the Professional Contemporary Dance Certification Program (PCDCP), where she trained extensively with Judith Sánchez Ruíz. The encounter with Sánchez Ruíz’s artistic and pedagogical approaches has been an important influence on her understanding of movement, performance, and embodied research.
As a performer, Leila has presented Portrait of an Anti-Hero, a work by Judith Sánchez Ruíz, on multiple occasions since 2025, including performances at Kiezkapelle Neukölln as part of the Grains of Memory exhibition.
Her choreographic work includes Why Death Was Just Death, supported by the DisTanzen Solo program and presented at venues such as Zukunst Berlin, Acker Stadt Palast, ada Studios, and Cora Dance Festival. In 2025, she premiered A Space InBetween at Sommerwerft Festival in Frankfurt, exploring the layers of body, time, and space, and later presented the work in Berlin with three sold-out performances at Acker Stadt Palast.
In 2021, she co-created A Religious Mating with Nano Luque, which was presented internationally and will be revived in July 2026 at Theater Wasserburg.
Alongside her performance and choreographic practice, Leila teaches release-informed technique and improvisation with a focus on body awareness, instinct, gravity, and creative exploration. She is also a certified yoga teacher with more than 550 hours of training and teaches Yin Yoga informed by Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and fascia release, perspectives that deeply inform her artistic work.
Her research on sustainable artistic development and group processes, supported by DisTanzen in 2023, led to the ongoing development of a permeable collective structure rooted in exchange, adaptability, and shared artistic growth.
At the core of her work lies the connection between somatic awareness, intuition, and collective processes.