Alicia Díaz. Puerto Rican. Dance Artist.

As a dance artist and educator, Alicia Díaz inspires dancers, audiences, and students to investigate the body as a site of knowledge.  She encourages them to connect with their kinesthetic intelligence, listen to their intuition, and exercise their 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, dANCEpROjEct, Contemporary Motions, and independent choreographers Sally Silvers and Marion Ramírez amongst others. Recently, she has performed as a guest artist with the Maida Withers Dance Construction Company in Washington D.C.

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 recent collaborations with percussionist Héctor “Coco” Barez explore Caribbean cultural memory and identity by referencing Bomba, the oldest Afro-Puerto Rican music and dance form, characterized by the improvisational dialogue between dancer and musician. Their work has 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. 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.

Other directing experiences include en la brega dance company with Puerto Rican dance artist Ñequi González; Rubí Theater Company—a collective dedicated to creating works pertinent to 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).