Texas Dance Improvisation Festival 2020
2020 Guest Artists
Jennifer Monson
(Artistic director of iLAND-interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance) uses choreographic practice as a means to discover connections between environmental, philosophical and aesthetic approaches to knowledge and understandings of our surroundings. She creates large-scale dance projects informed and inspired by phenomena of the natural and the built environment. Her projects include BIRD BRAIN (2000-2006), iMAP/Ridgewood Reservoir (2007) Mahomet Aquifer Project (2009), SIP(sustained immersive process)/watershed (2010), Live Dancing Archive Vol. I & II (2012 and 2014), in tow (2015) and bend the even (2018). Monson has been on the faculty at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign since 2008 and was a Marsh Professor at Large at the University of Vermont (2010-16). www.ilandart.org
nibia pastrana santiago
Caguas, Puerto Rico (1987)Based in San Juan, nibia develops site-specific “choreographic events” to experiment with time, fiction and notions of territory. She is co-director at Beta Local and also serves as the Dance Program Academic Coordinator at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, the first of its kind in Puerto Rico. Currently, nibia is co-editing an anthology on Puerto Rican experimental dance with dance scholar Susan Homar, to be published in 2021. She has performed in works by Miguel Gutiérrez, DD Dorvillier, and maintains a collaborative practice with Jennifer Monson/iLAND. Her work has been supported by Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña and Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades. nibia is a 2019 Whitney Biennial artist.
