Alicia Díaz. Puerto Rican. Dance Artist.

As an artist and educator, Alicia Díaz inspires dancers, audiences, students, and collaborators to investigate the body as a site of knowledge.  She inspires us to connect with our kinesthetic intelligence, listen to our intuition, and exercise our creativity, in order to become active and compassionate citizens of the world.

Originally from Puerto Rico, Alicia Díaz is co-director of Agua Dulce Dance Theater with movement artist Matthew Thornton. Alicia has performed with Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Andanza: Puerto Rican Contemporary Dance Company, Donald Byrd/The Group (The Harlem Nutcracker), Joseph Holmes Chicago Dance Theatre, Alice Farley Dance Theater, Maida Withers Dance Construction Company, dANCEpROjEct, Contemporary Motions, and independent choreographers Sally Silvers and Marion Ramírez amongst others. Alicia’s artist statement – “Deep Listening / El cuerpo sabe y recuerda” is featured in the recent publication edited by Susan Homar and nibia pastrana, Habitar lo imposible: danza y experimentación en Puerto Rico (Editorial Beta-Local) / Inhabiting the Impossible: Dance and Experimentation in Puerto Rico (University of Michigan Press), the first book of its kind to bring together writing by artists and scholars and more than 100 photos to survey the field of Puerto Rican experimental dance across four decades. The book was chosen as its 2023 Book of the Year by the Dance Studies Association.

Her choreographic work has been presented in the United States, Spain, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Argentina, and Mexico. Alicia is deeply committed to practices of improvisation and improvisational performances. Her acclaimed collaborations with Puerto Rican percussionist Héctor “Coco” Barez “Deep Listening/Voces del Mar” and “Talking in Sicá” explore Caribbean cultural memory and identity, engaging Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba as a reference for their work as contemporary artists. Bomba is the oldest Afro-Puerto Rican music and dance form, characterized by the improvisational dialogue between dancer and musician. Their collaborations have been presented at Movement Research at Judson Church and Pregones Theater in New York City, the University of Turabo and Casa Ruth in Puerto Rico, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Richmond Dance Festival in Richmond VA, and the Harvest Chicago Contemporary Dance Festival. Their work is featured in Alicia Díaz-Dancer Explores Identity Through Bomba of Puerto Rican Voices (Season 2: Episode 3), an investigative TV documentary series about colonialism in Puerto Rico produced by CENTRO-The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College.

Most recently, Alicia directed the award-winning dance film Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond: Women in Resistance Shall Not Be Moved. “Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond” was co-created with her colleague and dramaturg Patricia Herrera, dance artists Christine Wyatt and Christina Leoni-Osion, interdisciplinary artist Luis Vasquez La Roche, percussionist Héctor “Coco” Barez, actor/vocalist Yaraní del Valle, and producer/editor David Riley. It was commissioned by the ICA@VCU (Stephanie Smith and Noah Simblist), Beta Local (Puerto Rico), and Philadelphia Contemporary for the exhibition Commonwealth. Living and working in the former capital of the confederacy brings deep awareness of the interconnections between U.S. institutionalized racism and the establishment of the U.S. unincorporated territories at the turn of the 20th century. Using the arts to explore this history, the film combines biography, poetry, ritual, and performance to link histories of racism and colonial capitalism through the tobacco industry in Virginia and Puerto Rico. Working within decolonial and feminist frameworks, the film weaves together the stories of Afro-Puerto Rican nationalist leader Dominga De La Cruz Becerril, white Puerto Rican feminist/anarchist/labor organizer, Luisa Capetillo, and Black women tobacco workers in Richmond, VA. Filmed in the last standing warehouse of the former American Tobacco Company, the artists approached the site as a “place of memory” honoring untold stories of resistance and liberation. In the midst of the massive antiracist protests of summer 2020, their creative process centered questions of equity and black liberation. Alicia recently co-authored with Patricia Herrera the article Danza, tabaco y luchas antirracistas, about the film in the special volume on Race in Puerto Rico in Categoría Cinco. The work was also featured in the article Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond: A Conversation Embodied Decolonial Creation with Alicia Díaz & Patricia Herrera in The Latinx Project-Intervenxions. 

Alicia was awarded the Community Engaged Scholarship Award by the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement, The University of Richmond in 2020 for her work with dance to explore the interrelated processes of race, capitalism, and colonialism. She has done so in partnership with many community organizers, artists, faculty, and students. She co-commissioned and supported the creation of Brother General Gabriel, co-conceived, guided, and co-directed by choreographer MK Abadoo and historical strategist Free Bangura, which was performed at the African Burial Ground in Shockoe Bottom; Alciia also worked with Patricia Herrera and students of their course Collaborative Arts Lab: Dance, Humanities and Technology to co-create the video project “Knowledge of This Cannot be Hidden” Westham Burying Ground Commemorative Act on the history of the unmarked burial ground for enslaved people at UR, and the recent film Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond: Women in Resistance Shall Not Be Moved for the Institute of Contemporary Art’s Commonwealth exhibition. Most recently, Alicia has collaborated with professors Patricia Herrera and Mariela Méndez to co-create the Against Racial and Gender Violence Intervention alongside students, faculty, staff and community partners, including Latinos in Virginia Empowerment Center and Colectivo LasTesis. They also joined forces with Prof. Mary Finley-Brook to co-create the Climate Justice for Puerto Rico Intervention, co-created by students and guest artists Paloma Martínez-Cruz of the Pocha Nostra, renowned bombera Tata Cepeda, the environmental lawyer Ruth Santiago, and anthropologist-activist Yarimar Bonilla. This intervention denounced The University of Richmond’s partnership with AES Corporation and their environmental and human rights violation due to the toxic coal ash waste from their power plant in Puerto Rico.

Other socially minded and community engaged works created with University Dancers at The University of Richmond include wise as serpents, inspired by the public and private lives of Civil War Union spies Elizabeth Van Lew and Mary Richards (also known as Mary Bowser) in Richmond, VA. who forged a secret and successful alliance against the institution of slavery, communicating messages to the Union and infiltrating the Confederate White House. The piece was created in collaboration with historical strategist Free Bangura (Untold RVA) and dance artist Christina Carlotti Kiolb; We Must Say Her Name, inspired by the work of anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells and the current Say Her Name Movement, this piece is a memorial honoring the lives of black women who have been lynched and continue to be murdered by police brutality and our criminal justice system. The piece was created in collaboration with dramaturg Patricia Herrera; and Through It All, honoring the first Black bust operators of the now Greater Richmond Transit Company and dedicated to the GRTC trailblazers of public transportation in Richmond, VA. The piece was created in conjunction with the GRTC Transit Museum exhibition Through It All: Families Moving Richmond, curated by Alexandra Byrum and co-created by students in the community-engaged course “Public Transportation in the Time of  Two Pandemics,” co-taught by Laura Browder and Patricia Herrera.

Alicia’s previous directing experiences include en la brega dance company with Puerto Rican dance artist Ñequi González; Rubí Theater Company, an inter-generational collective dedicated to creating works about Latinx experiences in the U.S.; and Art Farm—a summer artistic residency that brought together movement, video, light, and sound artists to Yellow Barn Farm in Northeast Ohio.

Díaz’s research on Latinx dance forms has been published by the Washington Square News, The Bronx Dance Magazine and The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States. She was featured in Shayna Samuels’ Dance Magazine article “Authentic Movement: Find Yourself in the Steps.”

Díaz holds an M.F.A in Dance from The George Washington University where she was awarded a University Fellowship, an M.A. in Dance and Choreography from The Gallatin School of Individualized Studies at New York University, and a B.A. in Art, Culture, and Society from Eugene Lang College of the New School for Social Research (now The New School University). Alicia has been dance faculty at Kent State University and Hope College. She joined the Department of Theatre and Dance at The University of Richmond in 2011 where she now serves as associate professor of dance.