luciana achugar2017

Choreographer and performer luciana achugar describes her work as “a practice of growing a new body, an uncivilized body, a decolonized body, a utopian body,” a body rooted more in pleasure and instinct as sources of wisdom than as a product of technical mastery. Through durational events and environments designed to bring performer and spectator into a more intimate and visceral relationship, achugar is erasing the divide between “process” – what traditionally goes on beforehand in the studio - and “performance.” Her deployment of the naked body, and repetition has been likened to pagan experiences or “new rituals.” She calls her work new theater, another/other theater, utopian theater – in Spanish: OTRO TEATRO.” A CalArts graduate born in Uruguay, now based in New York, luciana achugar is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography and multiple Bessie Awards.

She says, “I am interested in enabling a kind of transformation at the cellular level that begins from an empathetic experiencing of the performance event.”