RADicle 24/25

Puerto Rican movement artist Lourdes del Mar Santiago Lebrón aims to create artistic explorations that heighten the senses, provoke inquisition, and demand attention, honing in to their belief that true connection between art maker and audience is achieved through raw emotive experiences. A sense of urgency is common in their work, as art has long been a loud and persuasive means to cope and communicate, facilitating a healing and explorative experience for dancers and audience alike. As a Queer Latine woman, they are committed to making art that is unapologetic, ideally aiding to create a world in which people think longer, feel harder, and experience life without hesitation.

A graduate of the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University, they are currently pursuing their MFA at Washington University in St. Louis. Their research at Washington University in St. Louis includes, but is not limited to, dance on the body of the Puerto Rican and the histories, lineages, and politics that inform Puerto Rican dance encounters. The research largely considers national identity as a topic of discussion when grappling with questions about the diaspora, nation’s sovereignty, nationalism, and art as activism. Centering ongoing debates allows the research to inquire how bodies position themselves within relation to the politics and legislation that has/will impact their life and art making. Their scholarship seeks to further engage topics of race, class, gender, and sexuality to explore how values surrounding these topics circulate, manifest, change, and are enacted within dance in Puerto Rico and the diaspora.

An Artist-in-Residence at the Tyson Research Center, they are inspired when the opportunity to bring their environmental science studies at Johns Hopkins University into dance discourse presents itself, leading them to consider ecology, human movement and its connection to land, along with more sustainable ways of making artwork. Their latest piece a meating, choreographed in collaboration with Tess Losada Miner, was recently performed at the Fifth Biennial Graduate Student Art History Symposium Making Contact: Haptic, Temporal, Spatial, and Conceptual Connections. Described by curators as “Oscillating between moments of symbiosis and parasitism, the dance progresses through phases of synchronized collaboration and sudden disconnections or misunderstandings.” In 2023, their piece Un recuerdo del presente was commissioned to be performed at SUMMIT: THROUGH HER RISE at the University of Michigan Department of Dance through a cross-campus partnership between the U-M Museum of Art, the U-M Arts Initiative, and the College of LSA.

Lourdes will be exploring the creation of a new work with some of their former classmates, Sophia Perone, Kayla Laufer, and Marie-Amelle Thenoz, from Peabody Conservancy while at The Croft. The intial inspiration for their process at The Croft was “tejer” to weave. Lourdes initial intentions for their process at The Croft follow. ’Tejido’ relies on pattern making and repetition, the practice, much like dance, requires patience, consistency, and practice. The ephemerality of dance experiences can be exemplified by ‘tejido’, as loop stitches are never perfect and can be similar but never exactly the same. The care and love that each handmade item holds tells a story worthy of understanding. For myself, they tell the story of necessity. My ‘abuela’ and ‘tia’ many times jokingly comment, ‘Do you not feel the DNA I’ve crocheted into your sweater?’, referring to the hairs that have shed from their bodies, and found themselves part of the yarn that has kept me warm in my move from Ponce, Puerto Rico to the cold and unfamiliar Northern United States. The premise lies in exploring the ways my ancestors have actively connected me to them and my land through patterns of repetitive consistent care and how these patterns exist, merge, and change within me as a part of ongoing lineage.