Based in Switzerland and Lebanon
+41 76 5058641
simeacavelti@hotmail.com
Instagram
Bio
Born in Switzerland in 1991, Simea Cavelti is a dancer, choreographer and teacher. In 2014, she completed a Bachelor of Arts at the London Contemporary Dance School, The Place. Simea has worked as a dancer, interpreter and collaborator amongst others with Ya Samaar Dance Theater, Renate Graziadei, Fabrice Mazliah, Omar Ghayatt, Declan Whitaker (The Field), Johanna Heusser, Bassam Abou Diab, Simon McBurney, Maria Ursprung and Fritz Hauser.
Simea created the dance duos Kulankhulana (2018) together with Larbi Namouchi, Körper & Klänge zu Johannes Itten (2020) with Vasna Aguilar and ALÉA (2024). In 2021, she created a solo piece to Bach's Chaconne and in 2023, she created works in Lebanon: Imprints, a collaboration with Beirut Physical Lab, and a performance in response to Zad Moultaka’s installation Eįecta at the Sursock Museum in Beirut. Her work has been shown in numerous galleries, museums and theatres in Switzerland, Italy, Lebanon and Morocco. She is Associated Artist of Tanzplan Ost 2025/2026 and will première her work FELT RELATIONS, a collaboration with the visual artist Adrian Pepe, in November 2026 at the Tanzhaus Zurich.
Through her performances and choreographic creations, Simea invites audiences to reconsider the ways in which bodies, environments, and artistic expressions intertwine. By engaging her body in dance, Simea explores, questions, wonders, and challenges human interactions and coexistence. Her current research includes the presence of the animal, both through extension of the self, through imagination and memory as well as through materiality. Her practice aims to unfold and navigate the intricate fabric of relationships that shape our reality, revealing the infinite ways in which contact, communication and interaction occur — between the elements of the world, between the tangible and the intangible.
Commissions
Sursock Museum Beirut
Orgelfestival St.Gallen - with Fritz Hauser
Kulturnacht Thun
Museo Hermann Hesse Montagnola
Kulturnacht Winterthur
Agenda
2027
January 17 / Postremise Chur (CH)
FELT RELATIONS, in collaboration with Adrian Pepe
2026
November 11 / Lokremise St.Gallen (CH)
FELT RELATIONS, in collaboration with Adrian Pepe
November 7 - 8 / Tanzhaus Zurich (CH)FELT RELATIONS, in collaboration with Adrian Pepe
November 6 / Tanzhaus Zurich (CH)
FELT RELATIONS Première, in collaboration with Adrian Pepe
September 9 / Laurenzen Orgelfestival (CH)
Improvisation with Fritz Hauser & Babette Mondry
February 28 / Stadththeater Langenthal (CH)
Valse Valse Valse, with Johanna Heusser
February 27 / KK Thun (CH)
Valse Valse Valse, with Johanna Heusser
February 20 - 21 / Festspielhaus St. Pölten (AUT)
Rauschen, with Joachim Schlömer
2025
December 11 - 14 / Schlachthaus Theater Bern (CH)
Valse Valse Valse, Johanna Heusser
November 15 / TANZINOLTEN (CH)
Valse Valse Valse, Johanna Heusser
November 13 / Kurtheater Baden (CH)
Valse Valse Valse, with Johanna Heusser
November 6 / Kulturnacht Thun (CH)
Improvisation with Fritz Hauser & Babette Mondry
August 13 - 14 / far Festival Nyon (CH)
Valse Valse Valse, with Johanna Heusser
April 24 / Dschungel Wien (AUT)
LAB showing of my practice, with Declan Whitaker
April 11 - 12 / Theater im Pumpenhaus Münster (D)
Valse Valse Valse, with Johanna Heusser
April 4 - 9 / Dschungel Wien (AUT)
Valse Valse Valse, with Johanna Heusser
March 27 - 28 / Südpol Luzern (CH)
Valse Valse Valse, with Johanna Heusser
March 14 - 15 / Bühne Aarau (CH)
Valse Valse Valse, with Johanna Heusser
January 13 - 16 / Tanzhaus Zurich (CH)
Teaching Professional class
January 5 - 9 / Dschungel Wien (AUT)
Valse Valse Valse, with Johanna Heusser
2024
December 14 - 18 / Roxy Birsfelden (CH)
Valse Valse Valse, Johanna Heusser
November 20 / TANZINOLTEN (CH)
ALÉA, Reso Tanzfaktor Tour
November 14 / Maison Saint-Gervais, Genève (CH)
ALÉA, Reso Tanzfaktor Tour
November 2 - 3 / Points to Play Mulhouse (F)
Teaching a workshop
October 24 - 25 / Bühne Aarau (CH)
ALÉA, Reso Tanzfaktor Tour
September 20 / Théâtre Les Halles Sierre (CH)
ALÉA, Reso Tanzfaktor Tour
June 27 / Zentralwäscherei Zürich (CH)
Performing for Palestine, Action for Palestine Switzerland
June 11 / Lugano Dance Project (CH)
ALÉA, Reso Tanzfaktor Tour
May - June / atelier mondial grant (LBN)
Ongoing research project in Beirut
April 28 / Rumman Tripoli (LBN)
Imprints, Collaboration with Beirut Physical Lab
January 26 - 27 / Fabriktheater Zurich (CH)
ALÉA, Reso Tanzfaktor Tour
2023
October 28 / Kulturnacht Thun (CH)
Improvised Performance, Niklaus Vogel
September 23 - 24 / (LBN)
Improvised site specific performance, Lena Schattenberg & Paed Conca
September 22 / Sursock Museum Beirut (LBN)
Ejecta, Performance for Zad Moultaka’s installation
September 14 / (CH) / (LBN)
Here and also There, Soraya Leila Emery
September 10 / PROGR Turnhalle Bern (CH)
Some Aspects, Modular Ensemble
August 12 / Nehna wel Amar wel Jiran Festival (LBN)
Imprints, Beirut Physical Lab
June 13 / Zoukak Theatre Karantina (LBN)
Imprints, Beirut Physical Lab
June 11 / Beirut Art Center (LBN)
Imprints, Beirut Physical Lab
June 10 / IF Deir el-Qamar (LBN)
Imprints, Beirut Physical Lab
May 7 / Beit Beirut (LBN)
Imprints, Beirut Physical Lab
May 06 / Hammana Artist House (LBN)
Imprints, Beirut Physical Lab
2022
November 19 - 20 / Flughafen Bern Belp (CH)
Some Aspects, Modular Ensemble
September 24 / Kulturnacht Winterthur Villa Sträuli (CH)
Tout ce qui tremble c'est vrai
April 2 - 3 / Théâtre du Jura (CH)
Triomphe, Tommy Cattin EREM dance
FELT RELATIONS explores the complex web of relationships between humans and nature. Shaped by research in the mountains and by the processing of wool, the piece invites the audience to perceive infinity, rawness and tenderness. Felting, an ancient, repetitive gesture shared across cultures, is explored choreographically as a primal metaphor and made tangible to the eye, the body and the senses. The compression of wool becomes a condensation of history, landscape, knowledge, labour, and human and animal life: an atmosphere of interweaving emerges. On stage, a field of resonance unfolds between body and wool, two relational fabrics, soft yet resilient, breathing as they navigate the space within and around them.
Residencies
Dampfzentrale Bern, Dogo Residenz Lichtensteig, Chez Deplazes Burgund (FR), riverbero Poschiavo, Fundaziun Nairs, Tanzhaus Basel, Dansomètre Vevey, Tanzhaus Zürich, Gessnerallee Zürich
With support from
Fachausschuss Darstellende Künste BS/BL, Kulturförderung Graubünden. Amt für Kultur, Anne-Marie Schindler Stiftung, Schweizerische Interpretenstiftung SIS, E. Fritz & Yvonne Hoffmann Stiftung, Kulturfonds der Société Suisses des Auteurs (SSA), Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Migros Kulturprozent
Artistic Direction
Simea Cavelti
Concept
Simea Cavelti, Adrian Pepe
Choreography & Dance
Simea Cavelti, Nerea Gurrutxaga Arruti
Stage Design
Adrian Pepe
Costume Design
Anne- Sophie Raemy
Music
Laure Betris Najar
Dramaturgy
Anna Röthlisberger
Outside Eye
Chris Leuenberger
Light
Patrik Rimann
Production Management
Catalina Schriber
Production
Pomegranate Seed
Co- Production
TanzPlan Ost
2024
Initially ALÉA premièred at Théâtre Sévelin 36 in Lausanne in 2021 together with the choreographer and dancer Tommy Cattin. For the selection of the RESO Tanzfaktor Tour 2024, Simea further developed the work and explored its structure with two different performers namely Lena Schattenberg and Aly Khamees.
ALÉA maps out the poetic and physical resonance between two performers from the standpoint of water as both memory and imaginary. The piece is inspired by water as a connective, exclusionary and transformative force. The movement is raw and curious as the performers engage with the notion of fluidity both inside and outside their bodies tracing linkages to their environment on different levels of scale, whether this is in the form of particles, dew and droplets, or streams and ocean waves. Soft, rounded gestures meet hard lines, radical pauses, long gazes, sprawling and shaking bodies.
Residencies
Tanzhaus Zurich, Theater Roxy Birsfelden
Artistic Direction
Simea Cavelti
Choreographic Concept
Simea Cavelti
Dance
Lena Schattenberg, Simea Cavelti, Aly Khamees
Music
Steve Reich, Gaspar Narby
Production
Pomegranate Seed
Co- Production
RESO, Pomegrante Seed
2024
All That Lies Between Us is a poetic investigation and embodied meditation on my personal relationship with Beirut. Through movement, I respond to the city’s ongoing cycles of destruction and reconstruction, shaped by memories, perceptions, and lived experiences- both from within Beirut and from a distance. This project explores how the body holds and expresses the city’s layered contradictions and shifting dynamics. Where do the personal and the collective, the pragmatic and the imaginary, meet in the space of experience?
Financial support
Atelier Mondial travel/research grant
Artistic Direction
Simea Cavelti
Dancing walks
Samer Zaher, Dalia Khalife, Lori Kharpoutlian, Yara Khoury, Omar Bakeer
Video
Malek Hosni
Photo and Assistant
Chris Haber
Production
Pomegranate Seed
2023
In a sight- adaptive performance seven dancers embody individual and collective corporal testimonies of their memories and everyday life in Lebanon. The human – environment interchange, states of uncertainty, celebration, fear and desire meet through raw, curious and delicate movement. The body becomes an expressive site, resisting the various political and geopolitical crises in Lebanon and affirms its poetic capacities for self- expression. In a landscape of acoustic and electronic sounds the performers shake, expose and meet the audience in the depth of a charged silence.
Financial partners
Pro Helvetia Cairo, Swiss Embassy of Lebanon, private donors
Venue partners and performances
Beit Beirut, Beirut Art Center, Zoukak Theater, French Institute Deir Al-Qamar, Hammana Artist House, Beirut Arts Center, Rumman Tripoli
Artistic Direction
Simea Cavelti, Bassam Abou Diab
Dance
Andrea Fahed, Samer Zaher, Omar El-Bakeer, Miran Malaeb, Yara Khoury, Nathasha Karam, Dalia Khalife
Music
Ali Hout, Paed Conca
Video
Hadi Bou Ayash
Photography
Ibrahim Dirani, Chris Haber
Graphic Design
Carla Aouad
Production management
Simea Cavelti, Bassam Abou Diab
Production
Pomegranate Seed, Beirut Physical Lab
Co- production
Hammana Artist House