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Kianí del Valle is a Puerto Rican dancer, choreographer, director, actress, and performance curator. She is known for her choreographic solo pieces and her collaborations with composers and visual artists. She is also the founder of the KDV Dance Ensemble.

Kianí del Valle
Occupation(s)	Dancer, Choreographer, Director, Actress, Performance Curator
Organization	The KDV Dance Ensemble
Website	https://kianidelvalle.net

Biography

Kianí del Valle is based in Berlin and Los Angeles, originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico with professional experience in New York, Montreal, London and Copenhagen. Driven by anthropological, biological and sociological concepts, Del Valle’s work merges the lines of contemporary dance and performance art within film, photography, architecture, pop culture, technology and sound.

Life and Career

Del Valle grew up on the island of Puerto Rico, influenced by its culture, music, dance and movement tradition, as well as the political heritage of her native people. Her family members are creatives too, her aunt is a dance and theater teacher, her sisters are actresses, her mother is an influential writer, her father was a drummer and her grandfather a salsa dancer.

At the age of 10, Kianí had her first big performance for the Centro de Bellas Artes in Puerto Rico. Initially aspiring to become a painter, she took classes at a local performing arts academy from the age of 12, she then began taking ballet classes at that same school. This led her to discover her passion for dance, although, as she describes, dance and movement were always surrounding her and continue to form an integral part of her life in Puerto Rico.

After studying painting and sculpting for 10 years in Puerto Rico and abroad she decided to pursue a professional dance career and moved to New York to join Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. From there on, she would live and work in Montreal, where she received a BFA in Contemporary Dance from Concordia University, and in Los Angeles, London and Berlin. Over the years, Del Valle has trained in schools such as Ballet Teatro de Nana Hudo, Ballet de San Juan, Andanza, Rastro Dance Company, Sasha Waltz & Guests, Matanicola and Costa Compagnie.

While her company work sharpened her style and perspective on performance, she wanted to use her own creative vision and started choreographing and producing as well as directing in film, music, fashion, culture and 3D art. In 2016 she founded her performance group, The KDV Dance Ensemble. Del Valle has worked together with artists such as Objekt, Lyra Pramuk, Ziúr, Lotic, Raven, Bendik Giske, Floating Points, Clark, Labrinth, Ibeyi, Kelman Duran, Ludwig Wandinger, Bad Bunny, LSDXOXO, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Peggy Gou, Dirty Projectors, Matthew Dear, Kasper Bjørke, Simian Mobile Disco, Brandt Brauer Frick and others.

She presented her work in institutions like Funkhaus Berlin, Konzerthaus Berlin, The Barbican Center, The Getty Center, CCCB, National Sawdust, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Serpentine Galleries, Berlinische Galerie, silent green, Hamburger Bahnhof,Cathedral of Saint Vibiana, Haus der Kunst, Albertinum and Copenhagen Contemporary.

Del Valle also starred in the movie Charlie's Angels (2019), Golden Twenties (2019) and was the protagonist and movement director in Marianna Simnett’s The Severed Tail (2022). Moreover, she has taught in university programs including the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, Performing Arts School at University of South Wales, PERA School of Performing Arts and is the founder and curator of the festival CUERPO EN ECOS which celebrates movement and sound collaborations in Puerto Rico.

Own Choreographic work

In Del Valle’s first solo project I have grown taller from standing with trees she performed within the exhibition of the visual artist Claudia Comte at Copenhagen Contemporary in 2018. Catacoustic Flesh, her second production, was presented at the National Sawdust in New York in 2018. This was followed by A Conversation with Joseph Beuys at Hamburger Bahnhof and Engendered Otherness in collaboration with the production studio Hamill Industries which premiered at Sonar Barcelona in 2021. The piece Cuerpo Presente / Cuerpo Ausente formed a part of the Venice Biennale 2022. In the same year Del Valle presented the Tierra Quemada Solo, the video piece Sangre de mi Sangre, which was commissioned by the Julia Stoschek Collection and the WDR as well as the holographic installation La Luz. Templo Agrietado at Albertinum in Dresden in 2023, and AI Transmutations at Haus der Kunst in Munich in 2023 complete her solo work.

The first production of her group work with The KDV Dance Ensemble, Las Casas Invisibles, premiered in 2020 at Funkhaus Berlin. The piece is divided into three parts and accompanied by live-sets from Lotic, Raven and Floating Points. It deals with migration and the feeling of not arriving. The next choreographic piece, Hermanas Brujas, took place in 2021 at silent green as part of the Radical Sounds Latin America programming. The dancers performed a ritualistic-like happening within a circular stage dismantling birth, death and sexuality. The third production Tierra Quemada was part of Berlin Art Week 2022 and took place at the roof truss of historic Kühlhaus Berlin. Lastly, Vacío Suspendido was presented at Berlinische Galerie during the 3HD Festival in 2022. The production made use of the façade of the museum as the dancers vertically scaled the building and incorporated stunt elements.

Del Valle’s body of work is multifaceted and inspired by different disciplines, aesthetics, and media. She transforms elements of her classic dance education and combines them with her own innovative movement styles and modes of expression. Moreover, the context and physical space strongly influence her work as they inform her stories and choreographies. Del Valle collects impressions, visuals, ideas, peoples’ actions. She transforms emotion into movement and body language and amplifies them with light, design and music. In her own words she produces “movement that compels people to think about who they are in the world, how they inhabit a space, and their bodies as portals into the past, the present, and the future.”

As Del Valle stresses, her perspective as the storyteller is largely informed by topics of social justice, pre-colonial history and colonial status as they shape the reality and environment of her home. Further she is inspired by themes of spirituality, loss and growth. Her creative process is guided by intuition, reinvention and experimentation. Three of her methodologies as a choreographer are The third ear, error as a tool and own compass/movement maps.

References

Category:Performance art Category:Choreographers Category:Dancers Category:Puerto Rico