luciana achugar

luciana achugar is a two-time Bessie Award recipient choreographer from Uruguay, based in Brooklyn, whose work is concerned with the post-colonial world, searching for an undoing of power structures from the inside out.

After graduating from Cal Arts in 1995 she moved to New York City to work with several influential choreographers including Jeremy Nelson, Will Swanson, Maria Hassabi, Chameckilerner and John Jasperse. She began making work in a close collaborative relationship with Levi Gonzalez, and later began making her own independent work in 2002; since then she has created more than ten dances. One of her Bessie-Award winning works, PURO DESEO, was also chosen as a 2010 TimeOUT NY’s Best of Dance.

Her work has been presented at The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, Abrons Arts Center, Danspace Project, New York Live Arts, The American Realness Festival, The River to River Festival, CANADA Gallery, and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery in New York; at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; at ShowBox LA in Los Angeles; at Le Mouvement-Performing the City Festival in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland; at the Teatro Solís, and the Centro Cultural de España en Montevideo and the Festival Iberoamericano de Danza in Uruguay, and many others. Most recently, she presented her latest work OTRO TEATRO: The Pleasure Project at the American Realness Festival in NYC. achugar is an internationally lauded and sought teacher, as well. She regularly teaches at Movement Research (NYC), and on invitation at Zenon (Minneapolis, MN), Swarthore College (Philadelphia, PA), Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (DEU), and others.

achugar has recently received accolades and support from Creative Capital, Guggenheim Fellowship, NEFA’s National Dance Project Grant, MAP Fund, Jerome Foundation; Dance Magazine’s 2011 “25 to Watch”; Foundation for Contemporary Arts; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council President’s 2009 Liberty Award for Choreography; 2008 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in Choreography; a BAX10 “Passing it on Award” from Tere O’Connor; a 2009-2011 BAX Artist-in-Residence and a 2001-2003 Movement Research AIR, among others. Currently, she is an LMCC Extended Life Artist in Residence, a program of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, as well as an Artist cohort of The Hatchery Project, a collaborative residency between The Chocolate Factory, Live Arts Brewery/Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University, and Vermont Performance Lab.

lachugar.org