photo Lisa Nalven
I am a Queer Xicana-Tejana, choreographer, educator, and collaborator working with relational aesthetics, movement, digital media, networked, and physical spaces. I have an M.F.A. in choreography from Jacksonville University/White Oak and a B.F.A. in performance and choreography from Ohio State University.
I am a member of MotionDAO, a group of dancers and dance adjacent artists exploring the affordances of all the instances of the Web3 ecosystem: governance, token economic, decentralized finances, NFT, etc. I am a founding member of FARO (Facilitating Artistic Research and Ontologies) which is a network of scholar-artists-activists on the margins of academia, dance/somatics, and performance. We are interested in facilitating online, networked opportunities and events for practice as research, peer review, publications, panels, and performance. Currently I am working on developing movement modalities for work with embodied trauma amongst the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities, for which she is pursuing a Masters of Clinical Counseling, and somatic trauma therapy training.
Formerly I was the artistic director of W-I-P/Works In Progress, an artist-service organization where for 17 years I worked to cultivate a safe and nurturing environment where dance and performance-based artists could freely develop and present new and experimental work. I was the director and founder of my own dance company, SpareWorks.dance and founding member of Modern Dancer's Co-Laboratory (ModaColab), a contemporary dance cooperative in South Texas. I am a two-time recipient of The Artist Foundation Grant of San Antonio.
Inspired by human interaction and relationships, as well as the environments that create, shape and guide them, my body of work lies on two fronts; narrative movement biographies which tell stories from a feminine, Latina/x experience as well as abstract choreographies exposing a non-binary human condition that explores interactions of vulnerability and strength.
I utilize platforms such as text/writing, film, theater and networked online spaces for expanded understandings of dance. In 2016 I debuted my experimental documentary film Queer Be-Longing as an augmented reality film at Luminaria Contemporary Art Festival. In 2017 the film was presented at the Gloria Anzaldúa Conference El Mundo Zurdo. In 2019 I was a resident at the Cucalorus Dance Makers Retreat and was invited to present Queer Be-Longing at the Queering the Somatic: Interrupting the Narrative' Symposium at Middlesex University, London.
My work focuses on creating dialogue between artists of different modes and practices to encourage broader ideas of art and art-making. Past collaborations include but are not limited to: filmmakers Erik Bosse, Isaac Julien, James Borrego, Brenda Burmeister; theatre artist Laurie Dietrich; poets, Andrea ‘Vocab’ Sanderson, Lisa Cortez Walden; The Convergent Media Collective; aerialists, Laura DiPasquale, Jenny Been Franckowiak, Julia Langenburg; musicians and composers, Stephanie Key of SOLI Chamber Ensemble, Joe Reyes, Theodore Schechter; visual artists Doerte Weber, Steven DaLuz, Deborah Keller-Rhin, Barbara Felix, and Suzanne Paquette.
My work has been presented as part of Re/Devaluing Colorism: Intersections of Skin and Currency exhibit, Ten Tiny Dances (Counter Current Festival, Houston), Austin Dance Festival, {254} Dance Fest, The McNay Art Museum, Texas Dance Improvisation Festival, Movable Art Party (M.A.P), ModaColab's Merging Modes, Guadalupe Theater's Lupe's Art Blend, Texas Women's University, Art Salad, Diverse Works Houston, San Antonio Dances, Dance for U.S.A. W-I-P Créme, Jump-Start Theater's Young Tongues and the Blue Star Contemporary Arts Gallery.
Over the last three years, I have expanded my practice beyond performance and directing, to include writing on dance. In 2017 I presented my personal study on the use of social media as a tool for dance education at the National Dance Education Organization Conference. Ortega’s article, Corporeal Narrative; Queering Contemporary Dance in San Antonio Towards Voices of Color was recently published in Texas Arts & Culture Magazine. 2019-2020 was spent organizing, curating, and planning the festival Decolonizing Dance:Celebrating Bodies of Color. I am adapting, crying, re-learning, resting, and staying alive.