Live Arts | nibia pastrana santiago with Eduardo F. Rosario, el agua era el cielo

About the Event

As part of the opening day celebration for entre horizontes, nibia pastrana santiago, in collaboration with Eduardo F. Rosario, presents a four-hour choreographic event where movement and sound improvisation are the spearhead for reflections on near and far landscapes, of that possible place where water was the sky.

The title for this performance, el agua era el cielo (The Water was the Sky), is taken from the poem by Juan Antonio Corretjer, Recreaciones Panorámicas (1957).

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nibia pastrana santiago, en colaboración con Eduardo F. Rosario, presenta un evento coreográfico de cuatro horas donde el movimiento y la improvisación sonora son punta de lanza para cavilaciones sobre paisajes cercanos y lejanos, de ese posible lugar donde el agua era el cielo.

El título para esta performance, el agua era el cielo, es sacado del poema de Juan Antonio Corretjer, “Recreaciones Panorámicas” (1957).

About the Artists

Based in San Juan and trained in dance and improvisation, nibia pastrana santiago (b. Caguas, Puerto Rico, 1987) develops site-specific “choreographic events” to experiment with time, fiction, and notions of territory. She is coeditor, along with dance scholar Susan Homar, of the book Habitar lo imposible: Danza y experimentación en Puerto Rico (2023), published by Editorial Beta-Local. The English edition, Inhabiting the Impossible: Dance and Experimentation in Puerto Rico, is set to come out this fall with the University of Michigan Press, under the series Studies in Dance: Theories and Practices. In 2022, the exhibition Choreopolitics: Brendan Fernandes & nibia pastrana santiago was presented at MASS MoCa. nibia’s work has been commissioned by de Appel (2020) and the Whitney Biennial (2019), as well as supported by the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña and the Puerto Rican Arts Initiative Fellowship (2020–23). She is the author of the lazy dancer manifesto (2013). nibia holds an MFA in Dance with a minor in Latina/o Studies from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and earned a post-masters in Performance and Scenography Studies from a.pass, Belgium. She worked as codirector at Beta-Local and for a period of five years served as the Dance Program Academic Coordinator at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, Santurce. She has collaborated and performed in works by DD Dorvillier, Jennifer Monson/iLand, and Miguel Gutiérrez.

Eduardo F. Rosario (b. 1988) works with sound and currently lives in Los Angeles, CA. Eduardo has an MFA in sound from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2019) and a BM from the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico (2006). His last group show was Nada House 2021 at Governors Island with Embajada. Eduardo is from Caguas, Puerto Rico.