Mariana Valencia

Mariana Valencia

Mariana Valencia works through dance. She was born in Chicago amidst multicultural collaboration, went to college with a vast constellation of queers in Massachusetts, and in 2006 moved to New York to live as a choreographer. Valencia’s work is concerned with self-representation, collectivity and abstraction. She values Telenovelas and Spanish-speaking media as much as the Judson Dance Theater. Valencia has held numerous residencies and received awards for her choreography, the most notable being the 2018 Bessie Award for Outstanding “Breakout” Choreographer, a 2018 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant to Artists Award, a 2015 Jerome Travel and Study grant, and a 2023 Creative Capital Award, she was also an artist in the Whitney Biennial 2019. Valencia’s choreography and work reaches beyond the stage: in 2019, she published two books of performance texts, Mariana Valencia’s Bouquet (3 Hole Press) and Album (Wendy’s Subway) Valencia is a founding member of the No Total reading group and she has been the co-editor of Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence. She’s toured in the UK, Norway and the Balkans and her commissions include, Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Danspace Project, The Shed, Performance Space New York and Abrons Art Center.

Multidisciplinary artist Jazmin Romero was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. Her work explores memory, family, migration, and labor through performance, sound, music and visual art. Romero’s work is interested in understanding patterns of dispossession and displacement in her personal and familial history. Through experimental modes of storytelling, she shares her experiences in performances, video, and sculptural installations that center her resilient origins and create space for personal and collective meditation. She is a member of various music production and performance collectives - among them, COQUETA, which stages illegal parades and processions, most recently in New York and Los Angeles. Romero has performed at MOCA Geffen, Frieze Art Fair Los Angeles, MoMa PS1, Performance Space New York, and Miami Basel. Her solo show, “Servicios Express,” a presentation of film, ceramic sculptures, and performance, was exhibited at La Pau Gallery Los Angeles in 2022. She received a BA from Hunter College, New York in 2021 and currently is an MFA candidate at UCLA in New Genres.

Choreographic Fellow | March 18-31, 2024

Arrival

Choreographer Valencia and interdisciplinary artist and musician Jazzy Romero’s ongoing improvisation adapts to what’s physically possible in these times. Arrival is a we/us exchange between Valencia and Romero as they create, revise and surrender to their forms through improvisatory scores of choreography, music and text. Arrival is an embodied interplay between performative polish, rawness, rigor and distress. The practice is arrival, a constant showing up, and a promise to embodied practice.

While Valencia was in residence at MANCC, she and Romero engaged with Florida State University’s School of Dance students and had a class showing with the first years’ Dance Composition class and the third years’ Contemporary Perspectives class. Following the class showings, Valencia and Romero conducted a public showing that was open to the community as well as FSU’s School of Dance faculty, students and staff.

Valencia will return to MANCC in the ’25-’26 season to continue developing her artistic endeavors and exploring different creative avenues to aid her many multidisciplinary pursuits. Her long-standing relationship with MANCC has already been fruitful and will continue for years to come.