Yvonne Montoya
Choreographer. Writer. Speaker. Mother.

I am a process-based dancemaker interested in the transformative places and spaces movement creates for dialogues and discoveries. I engage communities of practice by using art as a catalyst for building relationships.

 

My work is grounded in and inspired by the landscape, languages, cultures, and the aesthetics of the lands in which I was born and raised, the U.S. Southwest.

 

I create low tech site specific, site adaptive dances that can be staged in both traditional and non-traditional dance spaces. My work has been staged in museums, art galleries, warehouses, community centers, restaurants and formal dining rooms, the patios of hotels, in water fountains and landscaping planters, and on the back of classic lowrider pickup trucks.

 

I believe that dance can appeal to larger and more diverse audiences when staged in non-concert dance spaces. I draw upon embodied, ancestral knowledge(s) and community histories for inspiration. 

 

In the SW deserts, I embrace rasquache aesthetics as an intentional practice and out of necessity. In general, my work is very intimate and is best experienced without a fourth wall.

 

I seek to advance, develop, promote, and cultivate Nuevomexicano, Chicano, and Mexican American dance artists in AZ, NM, the SW, and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and to build dance communities across the large expansive geographies of the Southwest deserts.