Kenji Matsuyama Ribeiro
Born in Paris, he grew up in Bologna, Italy, in a family of artists – his father was a principal dancer and assistant to Roland Petit at the Ballets de Paris, while his mother was a principal dancer at the Arima Ballet Company and the Tokyo Ballet.
He began his classical dance studies under the guidance of his parents and obtained a Bachelor's degree in Dance from the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, Netherlands.
He began his professional career at the Ballet d’Europe in Marseille, France, and later joined the Compañía Nacional de Danza 2 in Madrid, Spain. This was followed by the Ballet Carmen Roche and LaMov Compañía de Danza in Zaragoza, Spain.
In Montreal, he became a soloist with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, where he performed choreographies by Jiří Kylián, Mats Ek, Ohad Naharin, Stijn Celis, Marco Goecke, Mauro Bigonzetti, Didy Veldman, among others.
In 2015, he returned to Europe and pursued a career as a freelance dancer, combining it with teaching classical and contemporary dance. He teaches at the Dance Studio in Bologna, the Ravenna Ballet Studio, the Antonio Almenara Dance Center in Zaragoza, and as a guest teacher at the Escola Artística de Dança do Conservatório Nacional in Lisbon.
In 2023, he moved to Lisbon, where he works as an assistant to Sylvia Rijmer in the choreographic creation The Wisdom of the Crowd and the Precious Individual in It for the Quorum Project and is pursuing a Master's degree in Dance Teaching at the Lisbon Dance School (Escola Superior de Dança de Lisboa).