Astros Gunnarsdottir

Director, choreographer, dancer, Pilates Instructor
Email: astros@astros.is / pilatesbruxelles@gmail.com  

tél; 32(0)497389161/ 32(0)23254090

Curriculum Vitae

Astros graduated from Alvin Ailey American Dance Center í New York, 1986. After graduation she danced with Impulse Dance Company in Boston. She is CPI, Certified Pilates Instructor, from Romana´s Pilates, New York and finished her master degree, MA, in Art- and Educational Management from the University at Bifrost, Iceland.

Astros has been working as a Pilates Instructor since 2005 and has since then taught in Europe, Asia, Central America and the United States. She studied with Romana Kryzanowska and Guadalupe Guerro in Arlington Texas and with Javier Pérez and Esperanza Aparicio in Barcelona Spain.

Astros has worked in Boston, New York, Oslo, Turku, Paris, Barcelona, Tokyo, Colombo, Texas and Panamá as a Pilates Instructor, dancer and/or choreographer.

Astros has worked as a choreographer and assistant director in all the big theaters in Iceland. Among performances she has done are Hair, The Rocky Horror Show, Evita, Anna Karenina, La Forza Del Destino, Blood Wedding, Grease, West Side Story, Singing in the Rain, Piaf, The Wizard of Oz, Lazy Town, Little Shop of Horrors, Oliver,Little Matchgirl and Karíus and Baktus but the two last named she directed as well.

Astros taught at and was head of the modern dance department at the Icelandic Ballet School for 9 years. She taught at the Icelandic Ballet Company as well as almost every ballet school in Iceland, was a guest teacher at Turku Polytek Academy in Finland and at the Joy of Movement in Boston. She is one of the founder of Reykjavik Dance Festival, the only annual dance festival in Iceland and was director of the festival in 2005.

Astros was nominated as the best choreographer and the best dancer at the Gríma Theater Awards, 2004, for Skissa, a modern dance work and was nominated as a choreographer for The Little Shop of Horrors in 2006. The two children plays she has directed have both been nominated as the best children play; The Little Matchgirl in 2005 and Karius and Baktus in 2007. Among other modern dance works Astros has choreographed are Jumping Fishes, Skin and No Title, the videoworks Sperm and Men Image and the short movie Rear Window.

Spring 2008 Astros choreographed and danced a new modern dance theater piece, along with Lára Stefánsdóttir. The piece; Sisters, Lara and Astros have performed in two theaters in Iceland, at the National Theater in Panamá and at Seoul International Dance Festival in Korea.

In 2010 Lara and Astros did another piece; Brothers. Brothers where premiered in The National Theater in Iceland in May 2010.

Astros teaches the pilates method at Pilates Centre Brussels, wich she runs with her partner Thorfinnur Omarsson.