Bruno Beltrão | Choreographer, dancer

Born in Niteroi, Brazil in 1979. From 1993 Beltrao started to take street dance lessons with an Israeli teacher and fully immersed himself to this dance style, which was not very common in Brazil at that time. In 1996, at the age of 16, he established the ‘Grupo de Rua’ with his friend Rodrigo Bernardi. During its first two years, the company was devoting to competitive dance festivals and appearances in manifold events and TV shows. In 2001, Beltrao made his debut in the contemporary dance scene with the duet "Do Popping to Pop or Vice-Versa", presented in a festival in Rio de Janeiro. This work, which maintained a distance from the determined patterns of street dance, became Beltrao’s first step towards his individual style and a big turning point in his work. Since then, Belltrao has been seeking for the possibilities of applying hip-hop techniques freely for his own philosophical ideas. In 2002, Grupo di Rua’s work was introduced at the “Rencontres choréographiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis”, which was the occasion of their international breakthrough. From 2003 they were invited to a number of major festivals and theatres in Europe including Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Germany. Currently, while advancing his choreographic ideas, Beltrao is actively engaged in various social activities as well as endeavors aiming at the popularization and elaboration of hip-hop.