Marielis Garcia
Artist Statement
I am Marielis Garcia (she/her).
Rooted in identity, plurality, and abundance, I embody the role of a dancer, choreographer, director, curator, and educator as a fluid extension of inquiry. My choreography merges structured techniques from Balanchine, Horton, and Limon with improvisational tasks that regenerate themselves, creating multiplicity beyond form.
Collaboration is central, whether with performers, audiences, or musicians, situating the body as both specimen and lived experience, inseparable from emotion and spirit. My practice embraces unpredictability, humor, and abstraction to remix themes of identity, belonging, and impermanence, while honoring lineage past and future. More recently I have been exploring pleasure at the boundaries of discomfort, resilience, and ecofeminist ideas, guided by images of bodies lifting, heaving.
Ultimately, I create to connect—with myself, others, and the shared spaces that hold us all.
I have performed and toured with Brian Brooks, Peter Kyle, iKapa, Stefanie Batten Bland, and Helen Simoneau, among others, and I often collaborate with my friends Madeline Hollander and David Norsworthy. I am invested in creating and presenting collaborative dance productions.
I received my MFA in Digital and Interdisciplinary Art Practice from City College of New York. As of fall 2023, I am Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina–Greensboro, where I teach contemporary forms, ballet, choreography/composition, and dance as a digital practice.
My professional affiliations include artistic advisor for Judson Memorial Church Arts, writer for the Gibney Journal, curator for STUFFED Arts, and associate special programs curator for the Museum of Modern Art's Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done exhibition.
I believe in challenging presentational spaces and creating large-scale dance performances that engender a sense of impermanence and belonging — the spiritual and the corporeal.
I have been an Anne and Weston Hicks Choreographic Fellow at Jacob's Pillow and received Ballet Hispanico's Instituto Coreográfico residency and Alvin Ailey's New Directions Choreography Lab residency. Other awards and projects include a Faculty Student Research Grant from the University of Maryland, a City Corps Artist Grant, and five Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Creative Engagement grants. I have also received an UpStream Residency from Kaatsbaan International Dance Center, created a new work through a Dance Initiative Residency at The LaunchPad in Colorado, and received a Dance Spoleto Residency Award from La MaMA Theater to present a new work in Spoleto, Italy.