VIRGINIA POLI
Dancer | Choreographer | Teacher
VIRGINIA POLI
She | Her
Welcome! I’m Virginia, a freelance contemporary dance artist based in South East London.
Growing up in a family of a jeweller and an architect, I was surrounded by paintings, photographs, drawings, and creative thinking. From an early age, I was drawn to performance — from dance and theatre to juggling — experiences that shaped a layered and interdisciplinary artistic voice.
As a mover and maker, I am interested in physical theatre practices. I explore movement as a language to articulate personal and collective stories, giving form to emotional depth through the body. I am particularly interested in the body as a site of political inquiry — a space where societal and cultural norms can be questioned, resisted, and redefined. For me, movement is a way of returning to oneself: reclaiming authenticity, agency, and voice.
My creative practice is informed by visual arts, including painting, sculpture, photography, and fashion, which influence both the aesthetic and conceptual layers of my work.
Alongside performance, I am deeply interested in the transformative and connective potential of movement. I see dance as a tool to foster awareness, presence, and shared experience — creating spaces where people can reconnect with themselves and with others. As part of this, I am interested in further developing my practice through studies in dance movement psychotherapy, particularly in relation to trauma.
My wider interests in philosophy, psychology, and more than a decade of practice in Nichiren Buddhism continue to shape my perspective, grounding my work in an ongoing exploration of existence, meaning, and human experience.
"We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, as transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something that lasts longer than we do."
Herman Hesse - Narcissus and Goldmund