María del Pilar Rioja del Olmo (Torreón, Mexico, September 13, 1932) is a Mexican dancer who focused her career on Spanish dance.

Her training included mastering all branches of this dance: the bolero school, the folkloric, the classical, the stylized, and the flamenco dance.

Her contribution was the "innovative idea of introducing castanets into dance, with Italian and Spanish baroque music",[1] an idea that she derived from her work with Domingo José Samperio, who invented "concerted crotalogy".

[2][3] In the U.S., she was called the "María Callas of dance".

[4] Since 2003, Rioja has won program support for the creation of the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (FONCA), conducting research in several areas.