BAZA is the long-awaited dream of interdisciplinary artist and choreographer Zornitsa Stoyanova. BAZA is the home for her company BodyMeld, as well as a place for international interdisciplinary choreographic research, education, and community events.
After more than 20 years of watching dance spaces both in Philadelphia and in Sofia pop up and close, due to a changing political climate and a lack of institutional support, Zornitsa knew how deeply needed it was to have a privately owned space devoted to dance and choreography. After many years of searching and saving money for such a purchase, in April of 2025, BAZA (meaning base in Bulgarian and other Slavic languages) was bought by her and her husband with entirely private funds.
Located in an old communist municipality building, BAZA’s location was serendipitous, as Zornitsa grew up in that same building, helping her parents run the family restaurant located on the first floor.
BAZA underwent a tremendous renovation and is one of the few (if not the only) privately owned and publicly accessible spaces in Bulgaria with a sprung dance floor.
BAZA space for choreographic research will focus on creating a space for the independent dance and performance scene to rehearse, residencies, education, and for the community of Mladost and Sofia to have events related to dance, movement, and art.
We hoped to open our doors to the public in late October, early November 2025, but it didn’t happen.
Our first event was on Nov. 29th, 2025, and we officially “finished” our space 1h before the event.
We are excited to welcome you to our space.
About Zornitsa Stoyanova
Zornitsa Stoyanova (USA/BUL) is an interdisciplinary choreographer who works with movement, text, sound, light, objects and live feed special effects. In 2006, she graduated from Bennington College, USA, with a degree in Choreography and Sound design. After she moved to Philadelphia, USA, where she produced and presented performances and videos under the name BodyMeld. Since 2020, she lives primarily in Bulgaria and continues to run BodyMeld’s projects in both her locales.
As a dancer, she has worked for Zhana Pencheva, Willy Prager, and Iva Sveshtarova, Sasha Waltz & Guests, Eiko & Koma, Boris Charmatz, Cie. Willy Dorner, and many others.
Her performance AndroMeda was commissioned and presented by the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2020), and the solo performance Explicit Female was awarded the Philadelphia Rocky Award for Contemporary Dance. Since living in Bulgaria, she has created the Alternative Stage Festival, BodyMeld Performance Research Academy, and has presented her work in Antistatic Festival, Leap OFF Page Festival, and her own Alternative Stage Festival.
Stoyanova presents her stage works in traditional and non-traditional spaces, including St. Marks Church in New York City, Live Arts Festival in Philadelphia, DNK and National Gallery KVADRAT 500 in Sofia, Toplocentrala Gallery in Sofia, TAM in Veliko Tarnovo, and Wanted Festival in Rennes, France. She has been invited to choreographic residencies in Poland, Romania, the USA, and Bulgaria. Her latest genre-defying solo, Honesty and Other Fiends (a.k.a. Brutal Honesty) premiered at the Cannonball International Festival ‘24, in Philadelphia, USA.
Her most influential teachers are Deborah Hay, Meg Stuart, Ishmael Houston Jones, and Danny Lepkoff. Her screendance films have been shown in festivals across the U.S. and in Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Bulgaria, Ireland, Germany, Austria, and Bangladesh. In 2023, Zornitsa had her first solo month-long exhibit of her visual art and films at Toplotcentrala Gallery in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Zornitsa is also a supporter for sustainable dance community and is deeply invested in helping further conversation and collaboration. As BodyMeld, she values the exchange of ideas and sharing of methodologies, rigorous research, and experimentation in the field of performance. She strives to create a community curious and excited about the blending of genres in performance, experimentalism, and surviving and thriving in hard political climates. She teaches Improvisation Technique for Performance, Dance on Camera, and Composition and has done so in Philadelphia, France, Hungary, her native Bulgaria, and online. Zornitsa is also an editor for thINKingDANCE.net and a mother of two. In 2025, she obtained her MA in Choreography in the Netherlands and opened BAZA new dance space in Sofia, Bulgaria. www.bodymeld.org
About BodyMeld
BodyMeld creates dance performances and platforms that support the development of independent choreographers and dancers in Bulgaria and the United States.
BodyMeld’s mission is to contribute to growth and collaboration in the local and global dance field through partnerships and collaborations with artists and companies worldwide.
We work toward a sustainable dance community and support independent dance artists at both local and international levels. We value the exchange of ideas and sharing of methodologies, and we organize multiple residency programs, artistic exchanges, and mini festivals.
We support research and experimentation in dance—both on stage and at the organizational level. We recognize that life as a professional dance artist is full of challenges and often leads to burnout or dropping out of the field. That is why we aim to build an open, supportive community—especially for mid-career artists and artist-parents. Themes of survival and flourishing in a difficult political climate are particularly important to us, and our platforms consistently address the urgencies of the present.
Through our programs, we also aim to popularize “experimental” or “new” dance and performance by making it more accessible and legible to audiences. www.bodymeld.org
History:
BodyMeld took shape in late 2006 in Philadelphia, USA, with the aim of producing the artistic projects of Zornitsa Stoyanova as well as supporting other independent artists from around the world. From 2007 to 2011, BodyMeld produced the monthly showcase “Current: an evening of art and dance,” as well as “Dance Cinema Projects,” which together presented more than 80 artists over the years.
Since 2014, BodyMeld has organized “Get What You Need,” a monthly event supporting independent choreographers, which in 2019 grew into a year-round choreographic residency and continues to this day in Philadelphia, USA. To date, this platform has produced and supported more than 65 independent choreographers.
Together with Movement Research in New York City and Arts Station Foundation in Poland, BodyMeld created a residency program for Polish choreographers in Philadelphia (2018–2019). This residency included choreographic workshops, meetings with local choreographers, and performances. In 2017 BodyMeld produced “Moms Make Art,” a residency for choreographer-mothers. Over the years, BodyMeld has organized training programs with choreographers Deborah Hay and Susan Rethorst and partnered with Philadelphia Dance Projects to host training programs for guest choreographers from Hungary.
BodyMeld has been officially registered in the Bulgarian Commercial Register since 2020, when Zornitsa Stoyanova returned to Bulgaria. Since then, BodyMeld has produced Stoyanova’s original performances. Selected projects include Sound Body (2024), an international training program culminating in an interdisciplinary performance in Sofia in collaboration with Peter Shisholi (USA); Honesty and Other Fiends (2024), a political humorous solo premiered in the USA; Body, Text, Voice (2023) in collaboration with writer Sophie Vereaest (Belgium); The Hidden Level (2022) in collaboration with Paolo Cingolani (Italy), Ivaylo Dimitrov, and Sasha Krastarska; and Altered States: a performance conversation (2021) in collaboration with Megan Bridge (USA), among others. www.bodymeld.org
BodyMeld projects in Bulgaria:
- International choreographic exchange Trilateral Dance Exchange with partners Workshop Foundation (Hungary) and Philadelphia Dance Projects (USA) — 2023 to present. (link)
- BodyMeld Performance Research Academy 2023. (Funded by the National Culture Fund—NFK). (link)
- One-month international exhibition platform: En-trance: Women’s Bodies in Digital Landscapes at Toplocentrala, Sofia, May 2023.
- Festival “Alternative Stage — Together Beyond Borders” in Pancharevo — September 2022. (Funded by Sofia Municipality “Culture”)
- International seminar in compositional improvisation with showing at DNK — Performer Maker Self — 2021.
- Produced numerous online choreographic and multigenre workshops for participants from around the world.