Artist Statement:
My work as a choreographer is a hybrid and ever-changing response to these questions: How did we get here? And how do our histories reveal themselves on our bodies?
I identify first and foremost as a person that makes: I primarily make dances. My dances, like me, are hybrid creatures: part classical, part improvisational, entirely personal. I was trained in Western ballet in Los Angeles and New York City. Yet, these canonical movements map differently on my body, a body that has been underrepresented in the canon. I make modifications, bend rules, and break them, as I search for movement that feels authentic, and I innovate inside the dominant paradigm. This is a gift that immigrant voices give to the field. We revamp the rules and interrogate the forms, in order to bring together multiple histories on our bodies.
Born in the Philippines and raised in California, my desire to create is an obsession that keeps me alive, engaged, and helps me belong in this challenging world. I find companions along this path and we co-exist through collaboration, care, support, solving problems, and engaging in dialogue. My work draws from and brings awareness to the movement of each of our everyday lives. I marvel at our innate ability to reach, walk, stand, and gesture and am inspired by the empathy that forms between people who share space.
As a dance maker, I offer artists the opportunity to work in a multitude of ways regarding how form and improvisation can help support movement manifestation, studio practice, and performance. My work as an artist invites processes that encourage the collective experience of the group to help shape the content of the work. At the core of my creativity, I want to conjure an awareness about what it means to have a body. And to remind people that dance is a vital part of living, breathing, bleeding, sweating, mourning, and celebrating our time as temporary residents of this planet.
My interests are vast: From the limits of representation, post-migratory identity, the depths of our contemporariness, imperfection, queerness & desire, loneliness, ceaseless liminality, and my endless desire to make everlasting art, I strive to make the invisible visible. I want to be a representative of the dance world for my communities and to represent my communities in dance, casting my work as an extension of them. I want to be living proof that a little, brown, middle-class, queer, immigrant man existed and tackled the complexities of navigating a place in Western dance.
- Norbert L. De La Cruz III
I identify first and foremost as a person that makes: I primarily make dances. My dances, like me, are hybrid creatures: part classical, part improvisational, entirely personal. I was trained in Western ballet in Los Angeles and New York City. Yet, these canonical movements map differently on my body, a body that has been underrepresented in the canon. I make modifications, bend rules, and break them, as I search for movement that feels authentic, and I innovate inside the dominant paradigm. This is a gift that immigrant voices give to the field. We revamp the rules and interrogate the forms, in order to bring together multiple histories on our bodies.
Born in the Philippines and raised in California, my desire to create is an obsession that keeps me alive, engaged, and helps me belong in this challenging world. I find companions along this path and we co-exist through collaboration, care, support, solving problems, and engaging in dialogue. My work draws from and brings awareness to the movement of each of our everyday lives. I marvel at our innate ability to reach, walk, stand, and gesture and am inspired by the empathy that forms between people who share space.
As a dance maker, I offer artists the opportunity to work in a multitude of ways regarding how form and improvisation can help support movement manifestation, studio practice, and performance. My work as an artist invites processes that encourage the collective experience of the group to help shape the content of the work. At the core of my creativity, I want to conjure an awareness about what it means to have a body. And to remind people that dance is a vital part of living, breathing, bleeding, sweating, mourning, and celebrating our time as temporary residents of this planet.
My interests are vast: From the limits of representation, post-migratory identity, the depths of our contemporariness, imperfection, queerness & desire, loneliness, ceaseless liminality, and my endless desire to make everlasting art, I strive to make the invisible visible. I want to be a representative of the dance world for my communities and to represent my communities in dance, casting my work as an extension of them. I want to be living proof that a little, brown, middle-class, queer, immigrant man existed and tackled the complexities of navigating a place in Western dance.
- Norbert L. De La Cruz III
Upcoming:
2024
MARCH 7-18, 2024
Kent State University
Creative Residency
Live Performances April 5-7th
Kent, OH
Kent State University
Creative Residency
Live Performances April 5-7th
Kent, OH
MARCH 30, 2024
Golden State Ballet
Live Performance: "Semblance"
Balboa 100th Anniversary
San Diego, CA
Golden State Ballet
Live Performance: "Semblance"
Balboa 100th Anniversary
San Diego, CA
MARCH 31-April 1, 2024
Hyphen Arthouse
Creation process
performances June 1 at Stomping Ground (LA)
Hyphen Arthouse
Creation process
performances June 1 at Stomping Ground (LA)
APRIL 6 & 7, 2024
Golden State Ballet
Program: From New York With Love
Live Performance: "Semblance"
The Historic Balboa Theatre
San Diego, CA
Golden State Ballet
Program: From New York With Love
Live Performance: "Semblance"
The Historic Balboa Theatre
San Diego, CA
APRIL 10, 2024
Golden State Ballet
Program: From New York With Love
Live Performance: "Semblance"
Irvine Barclay Theater
Irvine, CA
Golden State Ballet
Program: From New York With Love
Live Performance: "Semblance"
Irvine Barclay Theater
Irvine, CA
APRIL 11 - 14, 2024
Hartt Dances: Spring Dance Concerts
World Premiere of “Thresholds”
University of Hartford, CT
Lincoln Theater
Hartt Dances: Spring Dance Concerts
World Premiere of “Thresholds”
University of Hartford, CT
Lincoln Theater
April 15-20th, 2024
Hartford Ballet
Creation process
Program: Planets/The Little Prince
Live Performance: May 2024
Hartford, CT
May 11, 2024
Satellite Collective
"Echo & Narcissus" duet
Performance in Tribeca, NYC
June 2-7, 2024
Dallas Conservatory
Summer Program
Dallas, TX
Dallas Conservatory
Summer Program
Dallas, TX
JULY 8-12, 2024
Richmond Ballet
Education Residency
Richmond, VA
Richmond Ballet
Education Residency
Richmond, VA
July 29 - Aug3, 2024
The Dance Institute
Summer Intensive & Creation
Austin, TX
The Dance Institute
Summer Intensive & Creation
Austin, TX
AUG 5-25, 2024
Move (NYC)
Creative Residency
Live Performances Aug 24 & 25
Move (NYC)
Creative Residency
Live Performances Aug 24 & 25
SEPT 2024
TBD
University of Louisiana
Creative Residency
TBD
University of Louisiana
Creative Residency
SEPT 23 - OCT 4, 2024
Boston Conservatory
Creative Residency
Live Performances Nov 1 & 2
Boston, MA
Boston Conservatory
Creative Residency
Live Performances Nov 1 & 2
Boston, MA
OCT 14 - 25, 2024
LA County High School for the Arts
Creation Process
Los Angeles, CA
LA County High School for the Arts
Creation Process
Los Angeles, CA
2025
Spring 2025
Commission
TBA
(St. Louis, MO)
Commission
TBA
(St. Louis, MO)
Spring 2025
Commission
TBA
Dallas, TX
Commission
TBA
Dallas, TX
2025
Commission
TBA
Newport, RI
Commission
TBA
Newport, RI