Dancer, choreographer and teacher.  She started her studies of music and theater at the age of eight.  She subsequently studied dance at the National System for Professional Teaching of Dance in Mexico City.  In 1987 she joined the dance company U,X. Onodanza and  later join Danzahoy Dance Company from Venezuela. In 1992 she founded Delfos Contemporary Dance with Victor Manuel. She has received several awards for her artistic works including the National Dance Award in 1992, Best Female Dancer at the International Dance Festival of San Luis Potosi in 2005, and Best Female Dancer at the National Dance Award in 1998 and the 2002. In 2001 the specialized critics selected her as “One of the 10Mexican Best Dancers of the XX Century”. The National Endowment for the Arts has also honored her with several fellowships for the Arts. In 2007 she was invited as International Visiting Artist at the 25^th Bates Dance Festival, she came back as a Faculty member and choreographer in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2015. In 2008, 2011 and 2015 she receive the prestigious National System of Arts Creators, one of the most important recognition for artists in Mexico honored by CONACULTA-FONCA . Her video work “Between water walls” received the “Dona et Cinema International Festival award as Best video-creation 2012” in Valencia-Spain. The video-dance “Blank Mind” co-directed with Omar Carrum was selected in AGITE Y SIRVA Film Festival in 2015.

She has been a featured performer in over 80 works of dance, theater, video and opera, working with an international roster of choreographers and artist and performing in some of the world’s most prestigious theaters. Claudia has created more than 40 choreographic works and has collaborated with composers, theater and opera directors, photographers, video artists, poets and other choreographers for more than two decades. Her work has been praised by critics and presented in America, Latin America, Asia, Middle East and Europe. In 2011 she received a Mellon Residential Fellowship for Arts Practice and Scholarship at the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry at the University of Chicago. As a teacher she has conducted workshops master classes in numerous cities throughout Mexico and abroad. In 2014 the Smith College and the Boston Conservatory invited her as guess teacher and choreographer.

In 1998 she created, along with Victor Manuel Ruiz and Omar Carrum, La Escuela Profesional de Danza de Mazatlán/EPDM, which has emerged as one of the leading dance conservatories in Mexico and Latin America.

Currently she is Co-Artistic Director, dancer and choreographer of Delfos Contemporary Dance and Co-Director and teacher of the Mazatlan Professional School of Contemporary Dance. She runs the Creators Special Program at the Centro de las Artes de San Agustín- CaSa in Oaxaca, specialized in the development of young choreographers and new ways of thinking about dance.

 “If we want to talk of the great figures of Latin American Contemporary Dance, the name of Claudia Lavista is unavoidable”    

          Valerio Cesio, Por la Danza Magazine, Madrid-Spain