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With 30 years of unwavering commitment to the arts, expression and movement Debora Balardini has traveled beyond craft to her calling as a performer, educator, director and producer globally. With creative and cultural career roots that began in her native home of Brazil, Debora has traveled as a teacher and performer in Japan, Argentina, France, and Chile before making her home New York City.

With fierce loyalty to movement and physical theater as an art form, Debora’s extensive performance background spans ballet, modern dance and tap.  After becoming Hatha yoga certified, mindfulness and overall well being greatly influence her approach to the arts. Debora has fostered a growing vision of traditional and experimental exceptionalism from voice-overs to theater acting, choreographic theatre direction and production, from cabaret to variety, from feature films to short films.  Debora is the founder of Group.BR – NY’s only Brazilian theater company, an award winning ensemble and her insatiable appetite for the arts lead her to be co-founder of Nettles Artists Collective (NAC), a Latina-based collective which have received multiple awards and nominations for original work.  

With theater credits to include the Cherry Orchard, Servant of Two Masters, Romeo and Juliet, The Threepenny Opera and Don Quixote de La Mancha, Debora sought to deepen her roots in NYC by co-founding PUNTO – an Events & Performance Space, a venue for social events, art happenings and performances that serves as a creative home and place for artistic community to collaborate, explore and thrive.

In the realm of avant-garde performance, she participated in the opera U with the Klingon Terran Research Ensemble from Holland held at the Watermill Center residency program and Tropiezos, directed by Enrique Pardo in Santiago Chile at Universidad Mayor. Debora’s credits as a theater director include The Serpent by acclaimed playwright Nelson Rodrigues in honor of his Centennial in 2011 as well as Infinite While It Lasts in honor of Vinicius de Moraes’ Centennial in 2013 and 2014 which was nominated for an Innovative Theater Awards 2013 for Outstanding Choreography/Movement as well the International Brazilian Press Award for best show.

Debora proudly directed and co-produced Apple of My Eye (Menina dos Meus Olhos), the first professionally produced play written and performed by an artist with Down syndrome, Tathiana Piancastelli. Apple of My Eye received a prestigious invitation to present at UNICEF in honor of National Down Syndrome Day and received a Brazilian International Press Award 2016 (BIPA) for Best Theatrical Production. She is also the director for Bother Line, a one-woman show created and performed by Gio Mielle which premiered at Punto Space and had a run at The Tank in NYC. Debora directed a performance of Episode #10 (Wondering Rocks) of Ulysses by James alongside fellow NAC members at the Mathew Gallery Multidisciplinary Ulysses Exhibition in partnership with Montez Press Magazine.

Debora is a 2017 SheRocks Art Innovator of the Year Award winner, accepting the honor in Washington, DC and also accepted a 2017 BIPA nomination for Best Actress and Best Theatrical Performance for Inside the Wild Heart.  

With a playful range that precedes her, Debora enjoys being the Mom’s voice for the Portuguese version of the cartoon Caillou, an award-winning television series about an inquisitive four-year-old. Currently, Debora is working on a 2-women piece with her mother slated for the fall 2020 and also directing a one-woman show premiering in the spring.  

Debora serves at the Board of Directors at the League of Professional Theatre Women and is a member of several organizations including Americans for the Arts, SAG-AFTRA, Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors, Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, Yoga Alliance, and the Alliance of Resident Theaters (The A.R.T.). She, her, hers.