Visual and Performing Arts Guest Artist Series

November 2 at 11:30 a.m.
Free via Vimeo
Film presentation and conversation

The Warp & Weft is an exploration of the interstitial spaces of the human psyche in a space of nostalgia and loss. With shifting centers and margins, the work explores ideas about memory, identity, present and past in a ritual of unraveling. Filmed primarily in 2014 in Ybor City and completed in 2017, the film is part of a diptych by Niurca Marquez that examines what is remembered, both in tangible and intangible forms. The work premiered at ScreenDance Miami in 2018 and was featured in 305 Havana Improvisation Festival in Trinidad and Havana, Cuba, that same year.

Please email Christina Acosta for the Vimeo link.

November 9 at 11:30 a.m.
Free via Vimeo

Join us for a conversation about flamenco--who owns it, who can perform it and how its history relates to our contemporary reality. All three choreographers are recognized in their field for sitting at the intersection of this traditional form and the contemporary practices that are propelling it forward. All three are also of Latin American and Caribbean origin and carry with them the long history of oppression, monetization, and appropriation that both this art form and the Latina body have been subjected to. 

Please email Christina Acosta for the Vimeo link.

December 2 at 7:30 p.m. 
Virtual Performance with Interactive commentary
Ticketed virtual event via Vimeo

Siempre quise ser bailaDora ("I always wanted to be a Flamenco Dancer") is an exploration of what it means to be mestiza and flamenca, Caribbean and Diasporic. This piece of research/creation was inspired by the commentary of one participant in a workshop on contemporary flamenco: "I do not want a colonized body." The work digs into the nostalgia of the “motherland” through collaged movement and sound, in and around the two hybrid bodies. The title plays with the mispronunciation of the word for flamenco dancer that is so common in members of the Latinx community. The work-in-progress premiered on June 3, 2018, at the Koubek Cultural Center in Little Havana, Miami, FL, and is part of the work done by Marquez during the "En Residencia" program, and was being further developed into an evening length production to premiere in May 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Niurca Márquez is an artist/researcher with a wide range, as a creator and performer in film, site-specific work and staged performance. Her work has been commissioned by and presented on various curatorial platforms in Europe and the US. She has worked tirelessly on presenting new works that examine notions of identity, cultural memory and ritual in flamenco within a contemporary framework, as well as, works that delve into the multiple layers of communication and understanding in the form. She continuously examines the many intersections of tradition and vanguard to create new languages and expressions embedded in flamenco but informed by contemporary practices in dance and theater: a reflection on the work’s historical placement and potential implications within a contemporary dance setting.