Media
Biography
Roya Carreras is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, choreographer, and embodied performance coach working across dance, film, theater, and commercial media. As a first-generation Persian and Andalusian artist, she approaches the body as protest, archive, and mirror. Her creative and pedagogical practice moves through improvisation, somatic inquiry, and embodied storytelling to investigate themes of migration, memory, surveillance, and collective humanism.
She holds an MFA in Dance from Bennington College with an emphasis in Performance Studies and Pedagogy, a BA from the University of California, Irvine, and is an ABT® Certified Teacher.
Roya has taught ballet and contemporary dance extensively throughout the United States. Her teaching appointments have included directing the Children and Teen Professional Program at The School at Peridance, teaching open professional-level classes, and serving as a faculty member in the Core Certificate Program. She has also served as Lead Instructor at the Mark Morris Dance Center and taught at Harlem School of the Arts, Inland Pacific Ballet Academy, and Riverside Ballet Arts, and has been a guest artist and lecturer at Cornell University, Yale University, and Northwestern University.
Her work has been presented nationally and internationally, including recent premieres at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston with Boston Dance Theater and commissions for Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Company and Peridance Contemporary Dance Company. Alongside her concert work, she has developed movement direction and choreographic projects for artists including Paris Paloma, Pussy Riot, Laura Dreyfuss, and Angélica Garcia, as well as campaigns for Spotify, Jolie, Thinx, and Meta.
As a performer, she has worked closely with Barak Marshall at BODYTRAFFIC, Bryan Arias, Danielle Russo Performance Project, and Lux Boreal Danza Contemporánea.
Her current research explores improvisation, voice, embodied memory, recovery, and futurity as choreographic methodologies, examining how movement can function as a site of resilience, transformation, and collective care.
She holds an MFA in Dance from Bennington College with an emphasis in Performance Studies and Pedagogy, a BA from the University of California, Irvine, and is an ABT® Certified Teacher.
Roya has taught ballet and contemporary dance extensively throughout the United States. Her teaching appointments have included directing the Children and Teen Professional Program at The School at Peridance, teaching open professional-level classes, and serving as a faculty member in the Core Certificate Program. She has also served as Lead Instructor at the Mark Morris Dance Center and taught at Harlem School of the Arts, Inland Pacific Ballet Academy, and Riverside Ballet Arts, and has been a guest artist and lecturer at Cornell University, Yale University, and Northwestern University.
Her work has been presented nationally and internationally, including recent premieres at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston with Boston Dance Theater and commissions for Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Company and Peridance Contemporary Dance Company. Alongside her concert work, she has developed movement direction and choreographic projects for artists including Paris Paloma, Pussy Riot, Laura Dreyfuss, and Angélica Garcia, as well as campaigns for Spotify, Jolie, Thinx, and Meta.
As a performer, she has worked closely with Barak Marshall at BODYTRAFFIC, Bryan Arias, Danielle Russo Performance Project, and Lux Boreal Danza Contemporánea.
Her current research explores improvisation, voice, embodied memory, recovery, and futurity as choreographic methodologies, examining how movement can function as a site of resilience, transformation, and collective care.
Education
Bennington College
MFA
Performance Studies and Pedagogy
2025
Languages
- Persian
