The multiple award-winning dancer and choreographer Maura Morales (*1977) fled her native Cuba for Europe at the age of 17. Today, she lives in Germany with her husband, musician Michio Woigardt, who is also the co-founder of the dance company Cooperativa Maura Morales.

After twelve years of training at a dance boarding school and with the prospect of a successful career with the Cuban National Ballet ahead of her, she defected during a guest performance tour in Vienna and seized the opportunity to begin a new life. A life that has taken her around the world, while repeatedly bringing her back to her homeland — the place to which her family and friends remain deeply connected. While she is regarded there as the successful German, in Germany she will always remain Cuban.

What drives a young person to physically separate themselves from everything they know, without any apparent necessity, and set off into the unknown?

What does the concept of home mean to a restless artist like Maura, and where and when does she feel that she has finally arrived?

Screening of the multi-award-winning dance documentary film MAURA, filmed in Havana and running for 13 minutes, followed by a conversation with Aldina Topčagić, contemporary dance artist and director of the Art Alive Association, and choreographer Maura Morales.

The film screening is part of Sarajevo Contemporary Dance Intensive 2026, organized by the Art Alive Association, with Maura Morales as this year’s guest lecturer.