3/ brianna lopez
Spotlight series
Brianna López is a dance artist who choreographs, performs, and educates. She holds a B.A. in Dance Performance from San Diego State University and an M.F.A. in Modern Dance from the University of Utah. She danced with the San Diego State Dance Team, The University Dance Company, and the Performing Dance Company during her studies.
Brianna’s dance research explores the interplay between multitasking, effort, and agility, unraveling their contributions to developing the available body. Drawing upon her training in Gaga and contact improvisation, she explores these elements in the creative process and performance.
During Graduate school, she extended her research to the Gender Studies department, where she pursued a Graduate Gender Studies certificate. She brought conversations typically held in Gender Studies classrooms and into the studio to inform her dance-making practices. She designed a hybrid cross-listed course, “Physicalizing Feminism: Using the Creative Process to Embody Theory,” supported by the University Teaching Assistantship.
Brianna’s ongoing movement research focuses on the creative process as a way to explore, access, and evolve the various body-states in the studio as well as in performance. She believes that accessing these body-states are the source of one’s power as a performing dance artist. She cultivates this by questioning the perception of the body and the spaces that it occupies through the use of metaphor, imagery, and sensation. This process encourages an intersection that complicates one’s preconceived notions of the body by reimagining its form, limitations, and abilities. The choreographic works that emerge from these creative processes are crafted experiences where the structure manifests from the dancer’s commitment to their explored body-states.
In 2020, her dance research led her to move to Tel Aviv to train in Ohad Naharin’s movement language, Gaga. She regularly attended Gaga/People classes at Suzanne Dellal Centre for Dance and Theatre. She collaborated with Israeli photographers, videographers, filmmakers, musicians, singer-songwriters, and fashion designers in performances and videos. Some artists include Yemima, Shay Moshe Moshe, Avi Perrodin, Irit Dekel, Eldar Baruch, DADA by Dana, and Nanig Fashion. In 2022, Michal Ben Lior, Artistic Director of ImPort, invited her to join her performing group of musicians and dancers. They performed at SOHO House, The Zone, Edna, and Collabo in Tel Aviv. The FEX Festival invited ImPort to perform an evening-length work at Habait Theatre. Lior also cast Brianna in her evening-length work, “Piñata,” performed in Alpha Beit Theatre.
In 2023, she joined the School of Music & Dance faculty at San Diego State University, teaching lecture and studio courses for non-majors and majors. She collaborated with her colleague, Jess Humphrey, in a transborder experiment, Portal, where she taught and performed at the Tijuana Cultural Center (CECUT) as a part of the “Festival De Danza Transfronteriza” and at the AUKA Escuela de Música del ICBC” in Mexico. She was also invited to be a guest performer with Lux Boreal in an evening-length work, “Skin Hunger,” directed by Joseph Alter. She is currently commissioned to set a work with independent dance artists in Tijuana, Mexico, that will premiere in March 2024.
Quietude
Mexico | March 2024
“Quietude" is a dance work that unfolds as a response to the complex and horrific events of the Hamas-Israel war. This piece delves into the challenges of creating connection and intimacy amid chaos and conflict, exploring the paradoxical states of the human body as it navigates through turmoil. The work explores the human spirit's resilience and capacity to seek harmony despite adversity. "Quietude" invites the audience to reflect on the universal theme of connection, emphasizing the profound impact that empathy and understanding can have in times of conflict. In this dance, the embodiment of paradox becomes a powerful vehicle for conveying the human experience, fostering a sense of shared humanity.
