Muriel Romero (Murcia, 1972) began her studies in classical dance, Spanish dance and music under the guidance of Alicia Monteagudo Ros. At the age of 11, she entered the Spanish National Ballet School, directed by María de Ávila. She continued her training with Lola de Ávila, and, at the same time, she studied classical dance in the free examination category, obtaining honors in all her courses. At the age of 14, she won the first National Prize for Classical Dance at the competition Ciudad de Barcelona, and at the age of 15, she won the Prix du Paris at the prestigious international competition Prix de Lausanne.
In 1988, at the age of 16, she joined the Compañía Nacional de Danza under the direction of Maya Plisétskaya, where she danced leading roles in classics such as Paquita by Marius Petipa, Les Sylphides by Mikhail Fokine and The Four Temperaments by George Balanchine. That same year she performed at the International Ballet Competition in Moscow, where she won three accolades: Mikhail Baryshnikov Award, Critics’ Award and Audience Award. This allowed her to begin his international career as first soloist of the Bayerisches Staatsballett (Munich), where she expanded her repertoire with works of the 19th and 20th centuries.
In 1993, she performed at the Nationaltheater in Mannheim and the Stars Gala at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, consolidating her classical dance career as prima ballerina of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. In 1995, she returned to the Compañía Nacional de Danza under the direction of Nacho Duato, where she worked with prestigious choreographers of the 20th century, including Jiří Kylián, Ohad Naharin, William Forsythe and Saburô Teshigawara.
In the year 2000, she began his career as a freelance artist, exploring new formats and collaborating with avant-garde choreographers and playwriters such as La Ribot, Sasha Waltz, Cisco Aznar, Mateo Feijóo and the Unterwegs Theater. She completed her career as a soloist with the company Grand Théâtre de Genève, and later, from 2006 to 2008, as first soloist at the Semperoper Ballett in Dresden, under the direction of the Canadian Aaron S. Watkin, where she deepened her artistic relationship with the choreographer William Forsythe.
In 2008, together with composer Pablo Palacio, she founded the Stocos Institute, a transdisciplinary project that investigates the intersection between dance and technology through the combination of dance, music, mathematics, experimental psychology and artificial intelligence. In his stage creations, she has developed an original vision in which the body is transformed into a place from which sound, image and light emanate interactively. Many of his works have been performed at festivals in Europe, America, Africa and Asia.
In addition, she has promoted and participated in prestigious European projects in the field of dance, together with other institutions such as the Politecnico di Milano, the Università degli Studi di Genova (Casa Paganini), the Coventry University, or the Motion Bank, a research project of the Forsythe Company. She has developed within them new techniques and technologies oriented to both the creation and teaching of dance, and to the preservation of the European choreographic heritage.
In 2021, she obtained a scholarship at the Real Academia de España en Roma in the Performing Arts category, with which she developed a research on the relationship between visual arts, dance, interactive music and artificial intelligence, resulting in the choreography Risonanze Occulte, with music by Pablo Palacio. It was distributed in different stage and filmic formats at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea and the Tempietto di Bramante in the city of Rome.
In 2022, she premiered, with the Stocos Institute, the production Embodied Machine, at the Mercat de les Flors in Barcelona. During the last few years, she has been working on a new European project for the Horizon Europe program.
Since September 2024, she occupies the position of director of the Compañía Nacional de Danza.
