Meet the Startup Forum 2026 participants

Agate Bankava (Latvia)

Agate Bankava is a contemporary dance artist who works as a performer, choreographer, researcher, dance critic, and curator. Her movement journey began with folk dance at the age of three, followed by ballet training at the Riga Ballet School, and later bachelor’s and master’s studies in contemporary dance at the Latvian Academy of Culture. Agate works with both professionals and non-professionals across public and non-governmental sectors, focusing on interdisciplinarity, collaboration, and community engagement. Since 2023, she has been initiating and curating the contemporary art mini-festival “Harvest Party,” which continues to grow each year. She believes in the power of dance and performing arts to inspire people and bring them together.

Monika Citvaraitė-Lansbergienė (Lithuania)

Monika has been involved in cultural activities since she was a teenager, starting as a volunteer and gaining experience through real, hands-on work with different ideas, teams, and artistic genres. Over time, she found herself working mostly in the performing arts sector, especially on movement-based projects – contemporary circus and dance. In 2022, she joined the contemporary performing arts festival ConTempo. There, she met inspiring artists and rediscovered her hometown, Kaunas, by seeing what art can reveal and transform. Today, she works as a producer at ConTempo while continuing her academic research on contemporary circus. Her work brings together practical experience and research, driven by a love for creativity and artistic development.

Shaquille George (The Netherlands/Curacao)

Shaquille was born and raised in Curaçao and moved to the Netherlands at the age of 18. They began teaching themselves movement styles with Hip Hop origins and later obtained his BA in Urban Contemporary Dance at the Fontys University of the Arts. There they learned a myriad of Hip Hop dance styles that they have absorbed into their own movement language.

Shaquille believes in the mix of different dance disciplines loaded with emotional value. Dance is not only an art form, but also a freedom of expression and an outlet for emotions.

Barbora Janáková (Slovakia)

Barbora Janáková is a cultural worker active in contemporary dance and dance pedagogy. In her teen years she studied dance at Nitra Conservatory and later completed her studies at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. She expanded her training through internships in Dijon, Brussels, China, St. Ermé, Amsterdam. For ten seasons, Barbora has been the statutory representative and manager of mimoOs company, collaborating with artists from companies such as B in Motion, Reserva, AST, ME-SA, Odivo, NUDE. Lately, she has found herself creatively involved in theatre productions as a movement director. She curates the educational project Telohra and teaches at the Bratislava Conservatory and at the Academy of Performing Arts (Erasmus+).

Yilin Ma (Finland)

Yilin Ma is a curator based in Helsinki who works at the intersection of writing, visual art, and live performance with a focus on queer diaspora narratives and queer-feminist approaches to how lyrical expression meets material experience. Currently, Yilin works as a curator and producer for the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma’s Theater’s URB Festival, and on independent projects within the field of art and fashion.

Elena Marinova (Bulgaria)

Elena Marinova is a young Bulgarian contemporary dance artist, choreographer, and cultural entrepreneur. A 2023 graduate of Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London, she is the founder and Artistic Director of Dance Frame Collective and creator of Head Under Water Dance Company.

Elena runs the educational platform Dance Frame Residency and the festival for emerging choreographers Dance Frame Fest. As a performer she has worked with Derida Dance Company and DUNE Dance Company, and as a choreographer with Ballet Arabesque, ATOM Theatre, DUNE Youth Company and more.

Oana Mureșan (Romania)

Oana Mureșan is a choreographer, artistic director, and founder of the OM Choreographic Center and the OM-Transilvania International Dance Festival in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Having practiced gymnastics from a very young age, Oana shifted her focus to performing arts and contemporary dance. She graduated from the “Gheorghe Dima” Music Academy in Cluj-Napoca, earning a bachelor’s degree in choreography, followed by a master’s degree in choreographic direction. Since 2016, she has created choreographies for various contemporary dance performances in collaboration with associations and institutions dedicated to dance and visual arts, both in Romania and internationally.

In 2022, she founded OM Choreographic Center and in 2024, she founded OM-Transilvania International Dance Festival. To her, dance is the most fulfilling way to inhabit the world.

Djam Neguin (Portugal/Cabo Verde)

Djam Neguin is a programmer and cultural producer. Raised in Braga and currently based in Lisbon, he creates platforms that foster artistic circulation, dialogue, and innovation across Africa, Europe, and the diaspora. He is the founder and artistic director of the Kontornu International Dance Festival, the Uabá Video Dance Festival, and the Praia Dance Showcase, and coordinates major international networks such as the CPLP Dance Network and the Network of Performing Arts Festivals. Alongside his curatorial work, he maintains an active artistic practice across performance and visual media. In recent years, he has travelled extensively as a curator and speaker at international festivals and conferences.

Michael Scerbo (The Netherlands/Italy)

Michael Scerbo is a creative producer, curator, performance maker, and researcher based between London and Amsterdam. He graduated from the School for New Dance Development (S.N.D.O.) in Amsterdam and Goldsmiths University, in London. Working across choreography, digital culture, and collective infrastructure-building, his practice explores the intersection of embodiment, cognition, and politics: investigating how knowledge, matter, and movement intertwine.
As a producer and curator, he collaborates with various independent artists and initiatives such as Cinedans, WhyNot, The Artists Circle Amsterdam, and Museion Art Club. Through these various frameworks, he supports artists’ development by presenting dance in contexts which bridge artistic research, encounters with the public, and imaginative infrastructure.

Verena Schneider (Austria)

Verena Schneider is an Austrian interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, curator, and performer working between Innsbruck and Vienna. With a background in biology, contemporary circus (Le Lido/ESAC, Toulouse), choreography (MA Choreography, CodArts Rotterdam & Fontys Tilburg), and postgraduate studies in performing arts curation, Verena has developed a transdisciplinary practice that moves across contemporary dance, circus, and installation. Their artistic research weaves together the autobiographical and the imagined, exploring the body as material and medium of knowledge.

Verena co-founded the contemporary circus company Kumquat alongside Charlotte Le May and the Viennese association Freifall. As a performer Verena worked for Bert Gstettner/Tanz*Hotel Vienna, Eva Müller / OFFTANZ Tirol, Arne Mannott / On The Edge Vienna and Le GdRA – Christophe Rulhes & Julien Cassier. Currently, she is focusing on their on project Erde & Plastik alongside the musician and composer Lukas Bamesreiter.