Marianela Boán is an internationally recognized choreographer, known as one of the most important artists of contemporary Cuban dance. She is considered a leader of the Hispanic-American dance vanguard. Her revolutionary style “Contaminated Dance” radically merges all the arts in dance performance to produce an original form. As choreographer, dancer and professor Boán has worked in more than 40 countries around the world and created more than 50 choreographies. She worked for nine years in Philadelphia, USA, teaching at Temple University and directing her company BoanDanz Action. In 2010, Boán became the founding director of the first national contemporary dance company of the Dominican Republic.
As the founding director of DanzAbierta and BoanDanz Action, she has been awarded numerous prizes in Cuba and abroad. Her recent works have been performed at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, at the National University in Bogotá, Colombia, at the Casa del Teatro in Santiago, Dominican Republic, La Mama Experimental theater in New York, Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia, Bates Dance Festival, Annenberg Center in Philadelphia, as well as eight cities throughout Mexico, including the Teatro de la Danza in Mexico City, as a part of the Red Nacional de Festivales de Danza.
With BoanDanz Action, Boán has premiered seven new works: Map (Conwell Theater), Fluid (Painted Bride Art Center), Quiereme Mucho (Mexico City), Eighth Commandment (Oldenburg, Germany), Voyeur (Live Arts Festival,Philadelphia), Decadere(Casa del Teatro, Dominican Republic),and Landscape on Hold, a collaboration with Gabri Christa and Tania Issac (Painted Bride Art Center.)
Her work has been presented at diverse venues and festivals including: Madrid en Danza, Cadiz and Fall in Spain, The Place Theater in London, Festival of Nations in Switzerland, Chaillot Theater in Paris, Le Hague Festival in Holland, CirqueRoyal de la Monnaie in Belgium, L'Arena deVerona and Goldoni Theater in Venice, Italy, Global Dance and Summer Theater in Germany, Edinburgh Fringe and Glasgow Festivals, Scotland, Odin Theater in Denmark and the most important venues in Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, India, Nigeria and Japan. She has been a Titular Professor at the Superior Institute of Art in Cuba (ISA) and has contributed to the education of several generations of Cuban and Latin American dancers.
Since 2000, she has developed an intensive work schedule in the US as a guest artist, choreographer and performer with her solo works Blanche Dubois, Fast Foos , Seagull, and Lifting, as well as teaching composition, creative process, improvisation, repertory, dance technique and movement for actors and visual artists.
She has created works for companies and institutions including the American Dance Festival (2000), Bates Dance Festival (2001, 2003, 2004), NYU Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics Encuentro (2001, 2002, 2003), Barnard Colege, Columbia University (2001, 2002, 2003), Anchorage Alaska University Ensemble, Alfred College, Wake Forest University, Florida International University, Asheville Dance Theater Company, FITLA Los Angeles, Dance Theater Workshop in New York, Hedwig Dance Company, Chicago, and Princeton University. In 2003, she taught a course in Contaminated Dance at NYU's Department of Performance Studies. She is the recipient of a Rocky Award (2008) and has received grants and commissions from the Cuban Artists Foundation (CAF), Painted Bride Art Center, National Performance Network (NPN), Dance Advance, and the Independence Foundation, among others. She is a member of the International Dance Council (CID). In 2010, she presented her company's work False Testimony on an eight-city tour through the Red Nacional de Festivales de Danza in Mexico, the works Voyeur and False Testimony in major festivals in Brazil, and the US premier of Decadere at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival.
Boán Biography (