Highlighting Our 12th Annual Summer Institute
Cynthia Paniagua
Cynthia Paniagua is a dancer, choreographer, and educator whose work reflects her Peruvian, Puerto Rican, Andean and Nuyorican heritage. Cultural identity, Andean cosmology, spiritual practice and Latine reality as a first generation New Yorker are all themes at the crux of her work, which mixes contemporary movement and Peruvian traditional dance. As featured in documentary 'Soy Andina' Cynthia has traveled throughout the U.S. and Peru, researching Peruvian folk dance, sharing her story and teaching dance workshops. She's the recipient of a Fulbright scholar and has spent over 15 years living in and out of Peru researching ritual dances as a form of conserving ancestral memory, acts of resistance, joy and changing societies. This work has led her to connect and exchange with dance communities in Peru (Andes, Coast, Amazon), Ecuador, Colombia and Puerto Rico. Cynthia has led numerous workshops and toured her solo work throughout Peru and the U.S.. She's a member Bombazo Dance Company and a featured dancer in the movie 'In the Heights.' She is the first choreographer commissioned for the United Nations Symphony Orchestra for the Andean based musical ' El Condor Pasa during the UN forum for Indigenous Issues in 2019. She is presently the founder of Kaypacha Dance LLC and director of Dance Your Ancestors, a program that's focused on connecting Peruvians in the diaspora to their roots through a deep ancestral and cultural dance travel exchange.
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*Dance programming for youth
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About Dancing Earth
Dancing Earth Creations dynamically activates our mission, to create contemporary dance and related arts through global indigenous and intercultural relationships centered in ecological and cultural diversity for creativity, health, and wellness.
Founded by Artistic Director Rulan Tangen, to serve a need rarely met in the USA, DEC gives hope and opportunity to Native, mixed, global Indigenous and BIPOC talent who have been largely outside the dialogue of mainstream performance because of lack of access. DEC is an organic constellation of largely self-taught dancers, composers, costumers, filmmakers, and spoken word artists.
Together, DEC artists work with community members, culture carriers, and inter-cultural elders to explore the rich diversity of ancestral heritage, contemporary identity, and relationship building, by collaborating on innovative ecologically themed performances. DEC's work promotes environmental awareness, cultural diversity, and understanding between peoples through contemporary arts expressions.
“We gather as individual artists to create experimental yet elemental dances that reflect our rich cultural heritage as contemporary global peoples. We strive to embody the unique essences of cultural perspectives by creation and renewal of artistic and cultural movement rituals. Ancient and futuristic, our dances are an elemental language of bone and blood memory in motion.” - Founding Director, Rulan Tangen