Salva Sanchis was born in Manresa, a town near Barcelona. He followed theatre studies at the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona, specializing on body theatre, mime technique, sword fighting, acrobatics and Aikido.
In 1995 he moved to Belgium to study at P.A.R.T.S., where he graduated among the first generation of students of the school. There he created several solos and group pieces. His graduation project "Less than a moment", a one hour piece with five dancers, was presented in several places in Europe.
In 1998 he created "Underline", a short piece for three dancers commissioned by the Centro Cultural de Belem, in Lisbon. In April 1999 he premiered "Reckless Reckoning", a duet made and performed in collaboration with Florence Augendre. In June 2000 he premiered the solo "Gap", which was conceived as a preliminary study for the group piece "Itch & Fear" (2002). After this came "Previous" (2003) a piece for five dancers that marked a change of direction towards a more abstract dance language and deeper research in improvisation. In the same year, and based on some of the material of "Itch & Fear", Salva choreographed the duet "Constant Relay".
In 2003 Salva joined the Rosas company as a freelance dancer for the production "Bitches Brew / Tacoma Narrows". This led to a choreographic collaboration with Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker that was made concrete in the projects "Desh" (2004) and "Love Supreme" (2005), where Sanchis and De Keersmaeker signed the choreographies together. Salva also choreographed the basic dance vocabulary for the Rosas creations "Kassandra" and "Raga for the Rainy Season".
In the same period and as a guest choreographer for the Rosas company, Salva also came out with his own performances, the pieces "Salva Sanchis / Bruno Vansina Double Trio Live" (2005), "Ten Variations in G"(2006) and "Still Live" (2007), all produced by Rosas. In the period 2003-2007, Salva's work was defined by a research that was guided by musical sources, and through working with jazz music in particular, he developed a personal approach to the relation between dance and music.
In November 2008, Salva premiered his 15th production, "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear", a piece for four dancers and one musician, co-produced by Trafo Budapest, Kaaitheater Brussels, Mercat de les Flors Barcelona and Rosas. "Objects..." is a piece that confronts pure movement with themes such as alien abductions, out of body experiences (OBE) and advancements in cognitive neurology.
Also in 2008, he made a dance piece to accompany an organ solo live concert of Bernard Foccroulle, director of the opera of Aix-en-Provence and ex-director of the Brussels opera. This project is still touring in the seasons 2010-11 and 2011-12.
Salva has also danced in Marc Vanrunxt's performances on several occasions since the year 2000. Since 2009, Salva and Marc are artistic directors of Kunst/Werk, a dance company structurally subsidized by the Flemish Government of Belgium. As their first project together within Kunst/Werk, Marc invited Salva to choreograph half of the stage within his project "For Edward Krasinski"(premiered in October 2010). In this performance you can see two parallel solos, one choreographed by Vanrunxt and the other by Sanchis, running simultaneously to Morton Feldman's piano solo piece "Triadic Memories", played live by Yutaka Oya.
Salva's new project, "now h e r e", is scheduled to premiere in February 2011. This project will be in many ways a continuation of the work started in "Objects in mirrorÂ…". Accompanied by the same artistic team, Salva proposes now a work about parallel universes and about absence, a look at the other side of the mirror.
Salva's research is very connected to his work as a teacher of dance technique and improvisation. In the past, he has been teaching workshops and classes in different countries and institutions, and recently his teaching activity concentrates mostly at P.A.R.T.S. He currently collaborates with the coordination of the Research Cycle of P.A.R.T.S., a task that includes teaching, advice on the design of the dance program and ongoing mentoring and evaluation of the students. He is also a main responsible for pre-selections in the audition process for the school.