It was with Doña Celia that Mónica began studying dance in 1991, at the Celia Neves Spanish Ballet School in Lisbon, focusing on Spanish regional dances, Escuela Bolera and flamenco. She later continued with Carlos Benavides, Salvador Martínez, Rina Garavelli and Isabel Quintero.

 

In 2002 she met Franco-Hungarian dancer Myriam Szabo (Yumma Mudra), a soloist with the Ballets Russes Irina Grjebina, with whom she began studying character dances and Eastern European Romani dances. Myriam proposed an innovative method for the transmission of art, which would later give rise to the Danza Duende International School, ‘Dancing Our Lives’. Mónica was part of the project for twenty years, becoming a certified Gipsy Duende instructor in 2013.

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Later living in France, she studied with Pétia Iourtchenko for three years at the Académie des Arts Chorégraphiques. A Ukrainian actor, singer and dancer from the Vlach Romani tribe, Pétia is the founder and director of the Paris-based company Romano Atmo. In France, she also studied with Béatrice Lavielle, Simona Jovic and Helen Eriksen. She undertook several trips to Eastern European countries, such as the Czech Republic (2003), Hungary (2008), Turkey (2008) and Romania (Komando, Szászcsávás, Bucharest: 2008 and 2009), where not only did she have the opportunity to study at festivals but also in family settings, with artists such as Mojca Rakipov Nursel (Slovenia), Elisabeta Ciobanu (Romania) and Reyhan Tuzsuz (Turkey). From 2013 onwards, she began travelling regularly to Berlin to attend the Romani Dance School, run by Katjusha Kosubek, where she studied with Anna Debicka and Rada Boguslawska. In 2021, she took part in several online masterclasses with leading figures from the Romanian Theatre in Moscow, such as Alexander Rubenchik, Angela Lekareva and Venera Ferar, organised by the Khurusha Online School.

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Since 2022 she has resumed her flamenco practice in Granada at the Carmen de las Cuevas school, and in Lisbon with the Companhia Rueda Flamenca, as weill as with Sofia Abraços, João Lara, Alejandra Gutkin and Cheila Silva.