About us - Death Proof Project

DEATH PROOF is a dance project led and built by 4 gentlewomen performers: Gaia Cavagliá (IT), Ana Paula Lemus Payiatsou (CY x SV), Laura López Ferrer (ES) and Lisa Kiesgen (FR). Their main project is to resist their own artistic death by supporting each other’s creations and research.

The style of the project is inspired by cinematographic culture and images, intimate experiences and physical theatre, with the main goal of experiencing the stage as a place of transformation.

For DEATH PROOF, stage is the opportunity to push the limit of performativity and presence.

DEATH PROOF believes that any art should be able to be felt by everyone that wants to, independently of their abilities or resources. When anything is created with this believe in mind and action, it is following the principles of Universal design, and DEATH PROOF believes in them.

DEATH PROOF aims to create performances for formal settings (theatre) as well as for unusual settings or other type of media as long as they give the opportunity to share emotions and experience truthful states (films, bars, art galleries, etc. All can serve as settings for DEATH PROOF to experience stage).

At last, DEATH PROOF is a collective built in Tilburg, The Netherlands, that has been working with Helder Seabra, Kristel Van Issum, Van Abbehuis…. and that is seeking to work with different artists, associations or any place where performative art can take place.

Like this, DEATH PROOF wants to push the limits (of our abilities, our emotions, legality, formality, the stage).

Ana Paula

Ana Paula Lemus Payiatsou is a dancer and performer from Cyprus and El Salvador. She graduated from Fontys Academy of the Arts and had her internship with WArd/waRD – Ann Van den Broek company in The Netherlands. Throughout her career she worked with choreographers like Anne Suurendonk, Helder Seabra,Zino Schat, Dance House Lemesos and Anthony van Gog. With her own work ‘Wagyu’ (2025)/A5 (2026)she dives into emotions and thoughts about misogynistic behaviours, the male gaze, and the disappointment that comes with it. With her solo ‘Fay’ (2024) she premiered as part of MSTT festival in Lublin. She takes inspirations from traumatic memories that come from her past or self imagined stories. She likes to created work that is atmospheric and abstract and intensely loaded. One of her fundamental beliefs is that we should embrace the darker aspects of the world as a means to evoke profound emotions and inspire thoughts and questions. As an associate artist and funding member of CRUELBEHAVIOR Projects, she co-created and performed the solo dislocated bloom, she was also part of the casts in ‘The Dust of My Concrete Child’ and ‘Notions of Rebellion’, further demonstrating her commitment to vulnerable, transformative storytelling. This year she is continuing her own work A5 (2026) performing in Murf Murw and Tanz House Basel, Co creating with Amantes Company, Co creating with Cruel Behaviour Projects and Dancer for the new production HIDDEN from Jelena Kostić

Gaia

Gaia Cavagliá (2002) is an Italian dancer and performer, graduating student at Fontys Academy of the Arts in Tilburg, the Netherlands.

In 2020, she moved to Porto, where she spent a year at Pallco Performing Arts School & Conservatory and subsequently began her journey into contemporary dance through the Oficina Zero intensive program.

Over the past years, Gaia has had the opportunity to study with and take part in creation processes led by renowned artists such as Mafalda Deville, Horácio Macuácua, Helder Seabra, Brandon Lagaert, and the Vandeutekom Collective.

She is also interested in exploring the possibility of physical theatre and expression, researching safe approaches to performing extreme emotions.

Recently she had the possibility to perform her solo ‘Per Margherita’ at the summer seasoning of United Cowboys and a duet made and performed in collaboration with Sara Ferreira, ‘Gestação’, at ENTER FESTIVAL.

In the season 26/27 she is an intern at Pfalztheater and part of a performance, research and support platform collective called Death Proof Project

Laura

Laura started to dance in Granada in the Professional Conservatory and as part of Inclusive Dance Company Vinculados, and she has now recently graduated in Dance Arts in Context, at Fontys Academy of the Arts (NL). She is a contemporary and experimental dancer and always has in mind the principles of Universal Design, now developing her own methods to connect performances and art of the 21st century to different audiences.

She works with the Company Roseta Plasencia in two different ongoing productions (Generación Z – Surfeando la herencia and SALT), and is also part of the emerging Company Amantes, directed by Tesa Avino, researching the powers of Audio Description (AD) and performing in her Instructions series. She is also part of different collectives: Death Proof Project (performance, research and support platform) and La108collective (curating and programming events).

In her own projects, she audio describes dance pieces (Instructions How to Fly, by Tesa Avino), collaborates and creates with musicians (Ceux qu’on aime, a production of Death Proof), and collaborates in research and performance with investigators in different fields (Proximate Intimacies, with Laura Papke (Performer) and Harm Belt (Technology Professor)). She is especially interested in the possibilities of interaction with the spaces and the people.

Laura bends and decomposes AD, exploring the sonority of the body in space and its emotional layer to offer an experience of her performance that doesn’t rely on the eyesight (ongoing research shown in Jacaranda: a collection and Romance de Gerineldo Sonámbulo). She also researches AD and accessibility tools as a method to archive dance (in residency with Tesa Avino starting December 2026).

Like this, a fundamental part of her artistic practice is her belief in the universality of individual experiences.

Lisa

Lisa Kiesgen is a dancer, choreographer and singer.

As a child, she joined a youth dance company and continued her training through various professional programs in Lyon, later developing her skills independently before entering the Fontys Academy of the Arts in the Netherlands, where she graduated in 2026..

She is now part of several collectives (DEATH PROOF PROJECT, Echoes of Tomorrow, La 108 collective), actives in programing (la108collective), movement direction for theatre piece (Rallume la lumière, A La Ligne), dancer for Tesa Avino (Instructiones & Ecosystem 0) and her own productions with DEATH PROOF PROJECT (Heartbeat solo, Site specific and Ceux qu’on aime).

She quickly became interested in the relationship between sound and movement, creating her first solo piece based on music she co-composed on a synthesizer, exploring how to translate sound into movement. Previously focused on the sound produced by her body while dancing, her interest has expanded to include the role a performer takes on, what is shown, hidden, or transformed within oneself to become someone or something else during a performance. Uniqueness, detail, and vulnerability lie at the heart of her artistic practice.