BODY AND SOUL: Judith Sánchez Ruíz: no better time than now

Judith Sánchez Ruíz (photo: David Beecroft)

 

The Closest Knot, HKAPA, Hong Kong, 2022 (photo: Ah Liu)

 

Initially trained in dance in her native Cuba, Judith Sánchez Ruíz has enjoyed an illustrious international career that includes performing for one of the towering figures of post-modern dance, Trisha Brown, who died in 2017. Fans of both Sánchez and Brown rejoiced last year when the Trisha Brown Dance Company named Sánchez as the troupe's first commissioned guest choreographer.

 

I was honored when Sánchez agreed to take time out from her whirlwind schedule--we're talking about zipping from Hong Kong to Münster to Brooklyn to Switzerland!--to record this wonderful talk for Body and Soul podcast!

To listen to today's podcast with Judith Sánchez Ruíz, click here!

And scroll down for more information!

 

Rehearsing new work, Let’s talk about bleeding,
with the Trisha Brown Dance Company (photo: Julieta Cervantes)

"The Trisha Brown Company Hires a Choreographer Not Named Trisha Brown," by Brian Seibert, The New York Times, November 21, 2022

BIO: Judith Sánchez Ruíz, the Berlin–based director (Havana, Cuba) began her dance studies at 11 at the National School of Arts, Ciudad de la Habana, Cuba. Ms. Sanchez has worked with Sasha Waltz & Guests (2011-2014); Deborah Hay (2012); Trisha Brown Dance Company (2006-2009); DD Dorvillier (2002, 2019); David Zambrano (1997), Mal Pelo (1997-1999); and DanzAbierta, (1991-1996). She established the JSR Company in New York City in 2010, creating numerous choreographic stage works and site-specific projects involving live music with innovative composers and visual artists.
 
Her choreography doesn't rely on the mechanization or memory of movement but more on ramifications and layering of subjects on a radio, a concept used in her last two more significant pieces, ENCAJE (2017) and My Breast on the table (2019). Human casualness and complexity, improvisation, community, and activism are essential to her work.

Sánchez has been awarded grants by The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The American Music Center's Live Music for Dance program, and the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Her work has been commissioned at Danspace Project, Works & Process at Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum, and Storm King Art Center, NY.

Sánchez has been established as a choreographer and as a teacher at major higher education institutions in dance throughout Europe, the US, Latin America, and Asia. She was a recent artist in residence at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and is currently a guest choreographer of an interdisciplinary opera premiering this January 28 at the Théâtre de Münster, Germany. In addition, she is the first commissioned guest choreographer for Trisha Brown Dance Company and will premiere the original work Let's talk about bleeding at the company's Joyce Theater season, May 2-7, 2023.

https://www.judith-sanchez-ruiz.com/