Rima Pipoyan

Rima Pipoyan is a choreographer, director, dancer based in Armenia. She is one of the pioneers of modern ballet and contemporary dance in Armenia. Her choreographic works have been presented in various cities of Italy, Spain, Serbia, Croatia, Russia, Belarus, Germany, Poland, Moldova, Georgia, Belgium, Portugal, Greece etc. 

She has been the CEO and founder of the Choreography Development Foundation since 2017, which was established to support the development of contemporary dance and modern ballet in Armenia. 

Since 2020 she has been the head of the chair of the Modern Dance Department at Yerevan State Choreographic College. The department was created on her initiation. 

Rima has been working as a modern dance teacher at the Armenian State Pedagogical University since 2018. 

She has been a resident artist as a choreographer in Berlin at Akademie Der Kunste in 2016-2017, in Venice at La Biennalle di Venezia in 2019, in Brussels at Villa Empain in 2021. 

She graduated from the Yerevan State College of Choreography as a dance teacher and a ballet dancer with honors. Starting from 2008 she has been teaching at the same College as a classical dance, characteristic and historical dance teacher, as well as teaching choreography. In 2012 she graduated Yerevan State Institute of Theater and Cinematography as a choreographer with honors receiving Bachelor’s and Master’s degree. Since 2012, she has been teaching dance and curating the course of “Choreography directing” at her Alma Maters. 

Rima is currently pursuing her PhD in art and is writing a book on modern dance. 

She successfully staged numerous choreographic pieces and full-length performances, including: “That’s by falling that we rise”, “Medieval images”, “La Vita Nuova”, “Sinful passions”, “Hours of Visions”, “Triptych”, etc. 

During her artistic touring she met such renowned artists as Mats Ek, Anna Laguna, Akram Khan, Ohad Naharin, Alonso King and many others. Her solo performance “Woman before decision making” in her own interpretation has been presented at renowned festivals and contests around the world and has received various awards and prizes. 

In 2022 she became an Aerowaves choreographer and presented her performance at Spring Forward Festival in Greece and at MaiFestSpiele International Festival at Wiesbaden, Germany. In 2022, she was selected as a resident artist at the Begehungen Festival, where she staged the “Based on a True Story” site-specific solo dance performance.