Neri Torres
Born in Havana, Cuba, Neri holds an MFA in dance with a minor in film from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She also studied at Instituto Superior de Artes and Escuela Nacional de Instructores de Artes in, Havana. Neri is the founder and artistic director of IFE-ILE Afro-Cuban Dance Company, based in Miami, which repertoire combines traditional and contemporary fusion dance works. The company founded in 1996 has performed worldwide in tours, commercials and films, and also produces the IFE-ILE Afro-Cuban Dance Festival every summer in Miami, FL, since its creation in 1998. The festival contains an academic conference component that attracts local and international participants and renowned scholars among them the late Dr, Katherine Dunham in 2004.
Neri has taught lectures and master classes around the world in Germany, Mexico, Trinidad-Tobago and around the US. She frequently collaborates with local educational and social service organizations (Barry University, Florida International University and Miami Dade Public Schools among other) that serve the needs of Miami's various cultural communities providing art programs to at risk youth and children from underserved communities.
During her career, spanning over twenty years, Neri has worked on numerous international tours, movies, television and theatrical productions with renowned artists. She choreographed Estefan’s Grammy award-winning video No me Dejes de Querer and actor Andy Garcia’s directorial debut movie The Lost City.
Currently, Neri is completing a doctorate in Cultural Studies at the University of West Indies. Her research focuses on dance and migration, cultural appropiation, multimedia performances and hybridization in popular culture.
National Dance Education Organization (NDEO), Caribbean Studies Association (CSA), Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD) have been some of the conferences where Neri has presented her scholarly work. In addition, she is the editor of Perspectives on Dance Fusion in the Caribbean and Dance Sustainability: Rituals of Modern Society, a compilation of the Biennial Intenational Dance Conference proceedings, scheduled to be distributed in 2020 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
In 2002, Neri was one of the leading Hispanic professionals who were appointed the “Woman of the Year” award by Glamour magazine in Spanish. In 2013, Torres received the State of Florida Folk Heritage Award from Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner for her significant contributions to Florida’s cultural heritage through her outstanding achievements as a performer and advocate of Afro-Cuban traditional dance. Her company has received two Knight Foundation grant-awards: one in 2015 featured the premiere of Contra Viento y Marea (Under Heaven and Earth), a multidisciplinary piece about the Cuban Mariel boatlift, and in 2017 for Ni de Aquí ni de Allá (Nor From Her, Not From There), featuring dancers from both Cuba and US polarized shores under Neri’s direction.
