Yvonne Montoya is a prolific dancer, choreographer, and artist. For many years she created modern dance unique to the US-Mexico borderland experience. Her current work explores the challenges and rewards of mothers working in the performing arts. We look forward to the piece she will bring to Small Space Fest.

My name is Yvonne Montoya. I am a mother, freelance choreographer, and co-founding director of Safos Dance Theatre based in Tucson, AZ. For the past seven years, I have worked as lead choreographer for Safos where I staged 17 new pieces of choreography. Currently, I am working on a solo project entitled the “Motherhood and the Performing Arts (MPA)” Project that that explores the challenges and joys of balancing my role as a mother with a career in the performing arts. The MPA Project has three main elements including a dance film, a blog, and a handmade up-cycled earring collection. I am also currently working as a choreographer for three of Borderlands Theater’s productions this artistic season.

My choreography leans more toward the genre of dance theater rather than post-modern movement. I am most interested in creating low tech site specific or site adaptive pieces that can be staged in non-traditional dance spaces. My work has been staged in museums, art galleries, Community Centers in low income and undeserved areas, restaurants and formal dining rooms, the patios of hotels, in water fountains and landscaping planters, and on the back of classic pickup trucks. I believe that dance can appeal to larger and more diverse audiences when staged in non-traditional spaces.

The majority of my work is a fusion of movement with different art forms. I have incorporated theater, spoken word, music, performance art, and visual art in my work. For example, my piece “Puddles on the Floor,” a fusion of visual art and movement, featured dancers performing on a large canvas in paint which likened choreographers to visual artists by having the dancers represent “brushes” and the dance floor itself as my “canvas.” Additionally, for the past two years, I focused on ritualistic movement in my pieces. As a bi-cultural Latina artist living born and raised in the Southwest, I incorporate non-Western aesthetics such as movements, themes, and body types in my work as well as text from multiple languages. In general, my solo work is very intimate and is best experienced in small tight spaces.