Traveling Light, Maria Ache

Maria Ache's professional experience includes work as both set and costume designer and as an actor in theater, television and film.

She studied Contemporary Dance (Cunningham method) with Emanuel Brasil, Technique with Laura Proena, Elocution and Voice with Fernanda Giannetti and Classical Guitar with Sergio Assad. Her special training in the study of Circle Dances (including Ethnic Dance, Sacred Dances, and Dances of Universal Peace) was taken with Christina Dora Schkolziger, Saadi Neil Douglas Klotz and Native Brazilians Kak Wer (of the Txucarrame tribe) and Tigio (of the Cariri-choc Tribe).

In 1992, she decided to dedicate herself exclusively to the study and reading of the Tarot. The many workshops she has taught in the Interpretation of Symbols seek to lead students to meditation through Dances for Universal Peace.

In 1993, she entered the Institutte for Holistic Human Development, whose curriculum is based upon the principles of Gurdjieff. She was a disciple of Christian Paterham, the Chilean philosopher. She completed a course of studies in the teachings of the Fourth Path, and has ministered courses in Nonagrams and Conscious Movement.

Since 1994, when she joined the Universal Peace Dances Network, she has danced for the public with other peace dancers in the parks of Rio de Janeiro. In 1998, she participated in Brazilian dancer Luiz Aradis' performance at the Turtle Island Rhythm Festival, at Lama Camp, New Mexico. Back in Brazil, she left the Institute for Human Development to create the Grupo Chama (eflamei, in Portuguese) for Meditation Dancing and started to research Brazilian music and dance while composing and choreographing (with group members) a cycle of twenty-two dances to original music, inspired by the twenty-two archetypes of the Tarot's Major Arcana.