Quick disclaimer before we start:
I want to tell you why Mariana gets to be the first story here. When I asked her for an interview, the first thing she said to me was, “So what do you want to learn from me? You have all the degrees.” Fair question. My answer was something like: theory doesn’t mean much until you’ve seen it lived – and up to that point, I mostly had the theory.
Mariana has the rest. Which is exactly why this project starts with her.
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Once upon a time
At the heart of Amsterdam, surrounded by its picture-perfect canal houses and charming little bridges, there’s a dance studio that fills up with ballerinas every Wednesday afternoon for one very specific reason: the teacher, Mariana Santacreu Hofland.
Mariana came to Amsterdam from Spain as a child, and the city never really let her go. She grew into it, made it hers, and built a life as a ballerina – though ballet is just one thread in how she moves through the world. She also teaches yoga and a reportedly punishing pilates class, which tells you something about a person before you’ve even stepped into her studio.
Nothing basic about ballet basics
It feels like someone dipped it in the Amsterdam canals at dawn – her ballet class runs entirely to the rhythm of techno. That’s right – tendus and relevés are happening while Jay Robinson counts out how many people wear black in his song. And honestly, you could argue this is the most Amsterdam thing anyone could possibly do in this city. Mariana has managed to blend the discipline and precision of ballet with the release of a rave – two things that usually sit at opposite ends of the spectrum. This was the first surprise when I actually walked into that room.
The second was something I hadn’t felt before – after nearly 16 years away from ballet: relief. Relief that ballet doesn’t have to be only what we know it to be – rigid and unforgiving. That even though it has its rules, and even though it’s notorious for its obsessive attention to detail and the pursuit of perfection, there’s still room for play. Not the kind of play that lowers the bar – but the kind that makes space for personality. For individuality. Because in most dance classes, the room has a hierarchy you can feel the moment you walk in – some people freeze the moment they start comparing themselves to others, and some spend the whole class chasing the more advanced students, rushing to keep up without ever stopping to understand what they’re actually doing. Here it’s different. There’s room for humor, for growth, for a real workout – and above all, for you.
Most of us who still dance do it because of a love we’ve fought to hold onto. But Mariana makes it easy to love the class again for the sake of the class itself – the way every little ballerina once fell in love with dancing before she even knew what technique was. Back then we didn’t understand the pleasure of movement, we just knew that the ballet room was our favorite place. Where we met our friends, put on our tutus, and spun around until we were dizzy. For anyone who grew up loving ballet, this class reaches back and touches that. It heals something in your inner child – and leaves you with joy and euphoria.
Now that I had felt it, two questions were strolling around in my mind – as a dancer and as a psychologist: how did Mariana end up taking such an unconventional path within ballet? And what is she doing right, that allows her to create this kind of atmosphere in the room?
How did Mariana end up taking such an unconventional path within ballet?
For the first question, I had to ask her directly. The answer, however, was surprisingly simple. “Well, I grew up in Amsterdam liking techno, and that’s why I do it.” Is it really that easy – to just do what you love and find an audience that loves it too?
I asked her whether she had enjoyed performing classical ballet previously, trying to understand the arc of her career. “Absolutely, I loved it,” she said. “But sooner or later I understood that I didn’t want that kind of pressure and stress.” And at another point she added: “why should I have someone telling me to stand exactly how they want me to stand?” – which makes perfect sense the moment you define dance, in its purest form, as a means of personal expression. However, that’s something we rarely see in ballet, where the teacher is usually the sculptor and the students are marble – silent, surrendered to the expectations of whoever holds the vision.
Maybe that’s exactly why Mariana quietly rebelled. There was no dramatic tipping point, no moment of reckoning – she simply started teaching this way, and kept going. What’s beautifully, almost classically ironic about it is this: in a discipline famous for its rigidity, she built something radical – and then stayed faithful to it for over 40 years. In ballet terms, that kind of quiet consistency is the most classical thing you can do.
“And how did you shape your audience – how did you manage to find people who enjoy this, people who keep coming back?” Again, she took no action towards it. You can find Mariana on social media, but you’ll have to look hard – no videos of her classes, no photos or videos of her, no advertisement whatsoever. And yet the room fills up every Wednesday. Is it possible she simply attracts the right people? We’ll have to take her word for it, though it’s hard to argue when it took exactly one class to convince me to come back for the rest of the year.
She knows she’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and she’s learned to embrace that over time. I almost assumed she was born with that kind of confidence – but then she said she’s still working on it. Which is a brutally honest, deeply human thing to admit. Because here is someone who does exactly what she wants in her class, who has full creative control, who draws people in through the sheer authenticity of who she is – and she still finds it hard, some days, to be at peace with not being for everyone. There’s something quietly humbling about that. Something that makes you pause if you’ve ever been tempted by the deceptively simple advice of just be yourself and everything else will follow – because even when it works, even when it’s working beautifully, it’s still a practice. It never just becomes easy.
She may not be everyone’s cup of tea – but she’s certainly a strong signature cocktail.
Now for the second question –
What is she doing right?
This comes from a more professional angle, though as I told Mariana herself, there’s a difference between studying something in theory and actually encountering someone who lives it. I’ll spare you the frameworks and the technical language. I see three very distinct things.
First – she is fully herself. She jokes around, she lets you know when she needs your attention, she’s clear about the rules of the class, what she expects, what she doesn’t care about, what the whole point of being there is. She’s not hiding behind a work persona. Her work is herself. You get to meet the actual person teaching you – not someone performing a role, not an employee carrying out a task, but a real human being having a real interaction with you. In a world where professionalism is often code for emotional distance, that kind of presence is rarer than it should be.
Second – she knows her students. She makes a point of asking newcomers their names, and even when she doesn’t know you yet, she addresses everyone individually, offers feedback when it’s needed, and makes you feel seen. The class belongs to the people in it. She’s there to guide, not to perform – her ego isn’t in the room, and you feel that. Psychologically, this matters more than most teachers realize: when students feel seen as individuals rather than as an audience, safety replaces self-consciousness, and that’s precisely when real learning – and real movement – becomes possible. Third – she is on a mission to eliminate fear from the dance class. Technique is not the point. If you ask her to break down the mechanics of a movement, she won’t — not because she can’t, but because she genuinely believes that’s not where the answer lives. There is no right or wrong in her class. What she’s after is you finding the feeling for yourself – in your feet, in your body, and yes, cheesy as it sounds, in your heart. She pushes for presence over perfection, for intention over execution, and quietly encourages you to let go of whatever is holding you back from simply moving. Her rule is simple: “Less thinking, more moving.” It’s not a revolutionary phrase. But there’s a difference between a teacher who says it and a teacher who has built an entire class around actually meaning it.
Epilogue
To close – you might still be wondering why I chose this as the first post on this blog. The answer is that what Mariana represents carries our own mission in it. Noesis is about protecting the passion that keeps people moving – before it gets lost, before the pressure wins, before the joy quietly disappears. But Mariana reminds us that it’s never fully gone. That with the right space, the right person, and maybe a little techno – you can find your way back to it.
Mariana is one of those people you walk away from having learned something – not just about ballet, not just about teaching, but about what it looks like to build a practice around who you actually are. To stay faithful to it for decades. To let people in without losing the thread of it. That’s a lesson for dancers, yes – but honestly, for anyone who has ever tried to do something on their own terms.
She is the first of many.
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