Rodrigues set up the rehearsal center of her Companhia de Danças at the Favela da Maré in Rio de Janeiro. As a Valeska Gert Visiting Professor, she will address issues that have arisen in this special neighborhood. "Together with dance studies students at Freie Universität, we will work from the idea of "being together" using strategies of creation linked by a dramaturgical line that will be developed together with the students, articulating political, ethical, and aesthetic aspects," she explains. Pertinent questions in this context include: What rituals, sacrifices, and agreements are necessary for the constitution of a collective? How can we consider the singularity in this collective? How can each participant find a place – although always provisional – and still retain her or his similarities and (gender) differences?

Lia Rodrigues was born in 1956 in São Paulo, Brazil. She studied classical ballet and history at Universidade de São Paulo (USP). In the 1970s she was part of the contemporary dance movement in São Paulo and from 1980 to 1982 a dancer in the Compagnie Maguy Marin in France. Back in Brazil, in 1990 she founded the Lia Rodrigues Companhia de Danças in Rio de Janeiro, which continues to be active internationally with workshops and its own program. From 1992 on, she initiated and, for fourteen years directed, the most important dance festival in Rio de Janeiro, the Festival Panorama. Since 2005, Lia Rodrigues, in collaboration with the Redes de Desenvolvimento da Maré, has been developing artistic educational activities in the slums of Maré. This collaboration led to the creation of the Centro de Artes da Maré and the Escola Livre de Danças da Maré. Among other activities, the Lia Rodrigues Company has toured through Germany, France, Portugal, Belgium, and Spain with the play '' Pororoca'' (2009), a choreographic piece about community and its fragility.

The Valeska Gert Visiting Professorship is hosted jointly by the Institute of Theater and Dance Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the Akademie der Künste (Berlin).