American Realness

Mariana Valencia

ALBUM

Co-Presented by Abrons Arts Center & Gibney Dance

Thursday, January 11, 7:00pm
Friday, January 12, 8:30pm
Saturday, January 13, 5:30pm
Sunday, January 14, 2:30pm
Monday, January 15, 7:00pm

Run Time: 60 minutes

Abrons Arts Center, Underground Theater, 466 Grand Street, Manhattan
Single Tickets $25 / Abrons Festival Pass $20 / AbronsArtsCenter.org

Single Tickets Festival Pass

A solo performance where text, song and dance come together in choreographic methods, ALBUM researches herstory from a tableaux of personal narratives that encompass ethnography, memoir, and observations of cross-cultural identifiers. The otherness of herstory is pronounced as central while Valencia upholds and juxtaposes urban experience with suburbia, the countryside, and the imaginary plane. Through factual, humorous and grave observations, a frame of self-identification is established and charged with the task to archive and perform a self herstory as an album in image and song. Informing the viewer about the who and why of Valencia’s selfhood, we traffic through urbanity, vampires, love, and marginality in a performance as an altar for her body. 

ALBUM was created, in part, through the Artist in Residence Program at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Jerome Robbins Foundation and the Jerome Foundation. Residency support for ALBUM was provided by The School for Contemporary Dance & Thought in Northampton, MA., and the Movement Research GPS program in collaboration with Station in Belgrade, Serbia and Perform(a) Festival in Skopje, R. Macedonia.
Image by Alex Escalante

Created by Mariana Valencia
Performed by Mariana Valencia
Directed by credit to Lilleth Glimcher
Costumed by Mariana Valencia
Original Music: “Smoke Here”, “You are my Sky”, “Does it Come with Rice” by Mariana Valencia
Other Songs: “Conga” by Miami Sound Machine, “Don’t Think Twice it’s Alright” by Joan Baez


Mariana Valencia is a Brooklyn based dance artist, her choreography has been presented at Dixon Place, Brazil, Roulette, Center for Performance Research, Movement Research at the Judson Church, AUNTS, The Flea and Danspace Project. Her performance/lectures have been presented at The New Museum, Communities of Practice, The New School, The Women and Performance Journal, Sunday Process Labs, Lec/Dem, Ugly Duckling Presse​ and at BAM Fischer​. In New York, Valencia has held residencies at Chez Bushwick AIR (2013), New York Live Arts Studio Series (2013-14), AUNTScamp (2015), ​I​SSUE Project Room AIR (2015)​ and Brooklyn Arts Exchange AIR (2016-18)​. Internationally, she has held creative residencies in Serbia and R.Macedonia. Valencia has performed with musician Jules Gimbrone; in videos by Elizabeth Orr, Kate Brandt, and AK Burns, and in dances by robbinschilds, Kim Brandt and MPA. Her projects in costume direction include works by Vanessa Anspaugh, Lauren Bakst and Juliana May. Valencia is a founding member of the No Total reading group,​ a member of Crit Group and ​she’s been a co-editor of Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence (2016-17). Valencia is a Jerome Travel and Study Grant recipient (2014-15), a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant recipient (2015), a Center for Performance Research Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Artist in Residence Program recipient (2014-15), and a Yellow House Fund of the Tides Foundation grant recipient (2010-13). Valencia holds a BA from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA (2006) with a concentration in dance and ethnography. www.marianavalencia.work


“The choreographer Mariana Valencia has been thinking about her personal history — or, as she calls it, herstory. In her new work, “Album” — a compilation of dance, monologue and song — she approaches making performance as assembling notes for a future biographer. Dance is often romanticized for its ephemerality, but Ms. Valencia, shaping her own narrative, intends to leave a record.”
– Siobhan Burke, The New York Times