Merián Soto
Dancer, choreographer, video, and improvisation artist Merián Soto, is the creator of aesthetic-somatic dance practices and methodologies— Branch Dancing, a meditative movement practice with branches that investigates consciousness in performance; and Modal Practice, improvisational approaches to dancing the energetic body which she teaches at Temple University where she is Professor of Dance.
Soto is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including a New York Dance and Performance Award BESSIE for sustained achievement in 2000, a Greater Philadelphia Dance and Physical Theater Award “ROCKY” in 2008 for her One Year Wissahickon Park Project, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts (2015), a Leeway Foundation Transformation Award (2016), Rauschenberg Foundation Residency (2017), and most recently a 2019 United States Artists Doris Duke Fellowship in Dance.
Soto is Curator of the Temple University Institute of Dance Scholarship’s Reflection/Response Choreographic Commission, supporting the work of choreographers such as Kathy Westwater, Lela Aisha Jones, Awilda Sterling Duprey and Marion Ramírez.
Current projects include Modes!, a performance, exhibition, and scholarship project summarizing Modal Practice; Rompeforma ¡Fenomenal! 1989-1996, a documentary on the celebrated Latinx performance festival, co-directed and produced with Viveca Vázquez; and ongoing collaborations with Eiko Otake, and with choreographer Silvana Cardell as performer with Cardell Dance Theater.
Awarded Grants
2021
Window of Opportunity Grant (WOO)
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Overview
Merián Soto has been invited by Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico to present her solo performance altar/ofrenda to the dead, Todos Mis Muertos (TMM), in an upcoming large group exhibition, Novenario: Art and Mourning. Novenario commemorates and memorializes artistic projects that have been produced in the three years following Hurricanes Irma and María focused on mourning and healing.
In addition to the performance, Merián will also create a communal altar installation that will be the site of her performance and will remain for the duration of the exhibition to be transformed by ofrendas not only by herself, but by audiences as well.
This grant will support Merián's travel and installation costs for the performance.
2016
Leeway Transformation Award (LTA)
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Overview
Merián Soto is a Puerto Rican choreographer, video, and improvisation artist who has been creating and presenting solo, group, and collaborative pieces across the U.S. and internationally since the mid-1970s. Soto has collaborated extensively with visual artist Pepón Osorio on critically acclaimed works such as Historias, a piece that toured nationally and internationally from 1992-1999, addressing issues of racism and the exploitation of women by the pharmaceutical industry in Puerto Rico; and Familias, the Emmy-nominated work created in collaboration with eight South Bronx families in 1994-95. Committed to supporting new Latino dance and performance arts and artists, Soto is a founding artistic director of Pepatian, the Bronx-based Latino arts organization, for which she curated and produced numerous Latino artists projects including the celebrated Rompeforma festival in Puerto Rico, from 1989-1996. Soto teaches dance at Temple University in Philadelphia, where she has developed Modal Practice, the powerful improvisational methodology now practiced widely by choreographers in Philadelphia, New York, Puerto Rico and beyond. Since 2005, she has developed Branch Dancing, a meditative movement practice with branches, and the Branch Dance Series which includes dozens of performances on stage, in galleries, in nature, as well as video installations, and year-long seasonal projects. Soto is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including a New York Dance and Performance Award BESSIE in 2000, and a Pew Artist Fellowship in 2015.
