Photo by @Owen Scarlett
Gabriela Burdsall (b. 1989, Havana, Cuba) is a dancer and choreographer living in Finland. Her work weaves dance, theater, performance and audiovisual media, drawing on Cuban dance traditions, family archives and experimental movement to explore memory through embodied research. She coordinates artistic projects at the Teemu Luoto Art Foundation, focusing on dance and art events, including the Tanssin Päivä program during Kangasala Cultural Week in Kuhmalahti, Finland.
She trained at Cuba’s National School of Modern and Folkloric Dance and graduated in Contemporary Dance from the Higher Institute of the Arts of Cuba. She became a principal dancer with Danza Contemporánea de Cuba, where she performed from 2007 to 2015 in works by choreographers including Mats Ek, Jan Linkens, Itzik Galili, Àngels Margarit, Juan Kruz Díaz de Garaio Esnaola, Julio César Iglesias, and Carlos Acosta. In 2015, she left the company to pursue an independent practice, seeking a more expansive and personal understanding of the body and movement.
Recent presentations of Gabriela’s performances and collaborations in the United States and Europe include MENEO (2025), a solo piece presented at NOW Festival, Red Cat CalArts Theater, Los Angeles; ANOCHE (2024) a film by Alexandro Segade, On Work. Lecture by the Idiot (2024), written by William Ruiz Morales and presented at Submerge Festival, Berlin; and composed performances with Naama Tsabar on Friction (2024, Nazarian / Cursio Gallery, Los Angeles) and Estuaries (2024, Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie, Berlin).
In 2017, she moved to New York City and co-founded Living Away with William Ruiz Morales, a platform dedicated to amplifying immigrant voices in the performing arts. The initiative led to a live festival edition in 2019 and a virtual edition in 2020.
Gabriela Burdsall’s artistic path is deeply influenced by her grandmother, pioneering modern dance artist Lorna Burdsall. As a child, she performed alongside her in museums, theaters, and intimate living-room settings with the group Así Somos—formative experiences that continue to inform her work today. She carries Lorna’s legacy forward through both performance and curatorial practice. In July 2022, she presented her grandmother’s work in Exercises to Be Happy: Ephemeral Practices in 1980s Cuba, curated by Glexis Novoa and NAME Publications. She is currently developing a documentary that explores this legacy more deeply, working closely with her grandmother’s archives.
Gabriela burdsall 