FAMILIAS

Creation Credits

Concept & Direction

Merián Soto & Pepón Osorio

Choreography

Merián Soto

in collaboration with

James Adlesic, Patricia Dávila, Niles Ford, Merceditas Mañago, Kathy Westwater

Set s and Costumes

Pepón Osorio

Film/Video

Irene Sosa

Music

Carl Royce

Lighting Design

Jack Jacobs

Starring

James Adlesic

Patricia Dávila

Niles Ford

Merceditas Mañago

Kathy Westwater

and

Vicky Argueta, Donovan Arroyo, Juan Antonio Arroyo, Lorena Balbuena, Natalie Balbuena, Sara Balbuena, Michelle Boudreau, Yesenia Cecilio, Don Gellver, Belinda de Jesús, Caleb de Jesús, Ana de Pagán, Alejandra Martorell, Nelson Orozco, Marcelo Osorio-Soto, Darius Rusell, Noemí Segarra, Al Turner and Josefina Rodriguez

with

Members of Pax Theater

Melanie Fernández, Raymond Mozón, Oswaldo Ramírez, Fernando Rosario, Laureana Sierra

and

Los Cumbancheros

Musicians

Brad Craig, Chris Deschert, Mark Epstein, Carl Royce, Jonathan (Yunito) Royce

“Coming Out of Darkness” written by Sandra Maria Esteves

The Families

Arroyo, Ayres-Toro, Balbuena, de León, García, Gómez, Grullón and Rodríguez

Community Outreach Coordinator

Sandra García

Assistant Outreach Coordinator

Eduardo Alegría

Set and Costume Coordinator

Lorena Figuerola

Stage Manager

Susan Raidin

Technical Director

Jonathan Belcher

Production Assistant

Ana de León

Stage Hands

Felícita Pedroso, Javier de Mulder

Writer Corps

Sandra Maria Esteves, Don Gellver

FAMILIAS

Co-creators

Merián Soto

Dancer, choreographer, video, and improvisation artist Merián Soto, is the creator of aesthetic-somatic dance practices and methodologies, Branch Dancing and Modal Practice. Her 40+ years career in dance has spanned various artistic movements. A central figure in the ‘80s and ‘90s Latina Arts, Equity, and Community Arts movements in New York City, Soto has collaborated extensively with visual artist Pepón Osorio on full-evening interdisciplinary works such as Historias (1992-1999), hailed as an American masterpiece, and Familias (1995), created in collaboration with eight South Bronx families. Soto is also known for her experiments with Salsa, in critically acclaimed works such as Así se baila un Son (1999) and La Máquina del Tiempo (2004). Since 2005, she has developed Branch Dancing, a meditative movement practice with branches that investigates consciousness in performance, and the Branch Dance Series, which includes dozens of performances on stage, in galleries, and in nature, as well as video installations, and year-long seasonal projects including the award-winning One Year Wissahickon Park Project (2007-08).

Committed to supporting new Latino dance and performance arts and artists, Soto is Founding Artistic Director, along with Patti Bradshaw and Pepón Osorio, of Pepatián, the Bronx-based, multi-disciplinary Latino arts organization. In that capacity, she developed and produced numerous projects featuring works by emerging Latino dance and performance artists, including the Latino dance and performance festival, Rompeforma: Maratón De Baile, Performance y Visuales, co- directed with Viveca Vázquez, and presented in Puerto Rico from 1989-1996.

Since 1999, Soto teaches Dance at Temple University in Philadelphia, where she has developed Modal Practice, the improvisational methodology now practiced widely by choreographers in Philadelphia, New York, Puerto Rico and beyond. Soto is Curator of the Temple University Institute of Dance Scholarship’s Reflection/Response Choreographic Commission, supporting the work of choreographers such as Kathy Westwater, Lela Aisha Jones, Awilda Sterling Duprey and Marion Ramírez. Her writings on dance have been published in Choreographic Practices, Heresies Magazine, Movement Research Journal, and Contact Quarterly.

Soto is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including a New York Dance and Performance Award BESSIE for sustained achievement in 2000, a Greater Philadelphia Dance and Physical Theater Award “ROCKY” in 2008 for her One Year Wissahickon Park Project, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts (2015), a Leeway Foundation Transformation Award (2016), Rauschenberg Foundation Residency (2017), and most recently a 2019 United States Artists Doris Duke Fellowship in Dance.

Pepón Osorio

Pepón Osorio is best known for his provocative large-scale installations that merge conceptual art and community dynamics. His visual language, explosive and elegant, challenges traditional art canons with richly textured monumental assemblages that travel far beyond accepted notions of beauty and aesthetics. He emphasizes the exhibition space as an intermediary between the social architecture of communities and the mainstream art world and incorporates a multiplicity of objects to recreate fantasy-like quotidian environments—from barbershops to home interiors and taxis—that advance critical discussions. Osorio has worked with well over 30 communities across the U.S. and internationally, creating installations based on the real-life experiences.  He has strategically placed his work at the center of daily activity in order to re-position the role of art and the artist in contemporary society. His work draws from his richly varied personal experience, nuanced observations of complicated human relationships, and the exploration of spatial relationships alongside the presence of human physicality and spirituality. As the Laura H. Carnell Professor at Temple University’s Tyler School of the Arts, Osorio has developed a successful teaching practice that engages art students to present work in unusual sites.  

Osorio’s work has been shown at El Museo del Barrio, NYC; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, PA; Whitney Biennial at Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC; Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT; The Newark Museum, Newark; Africus Institute for Contemporary Art, Johannesburg Biennale, South Africa; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, Santurce; Bronx Museum of Art, NYC; Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wilfredo Lam, Bienal de Cuba, Habana; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Institute of Contemporary Arts, Philadelphia; the 27th Sao Paulo Bienal, Brazil, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY; as well as storefronts and department stores. He is the recipient of various distinctions including a John D. and Catherine T. McArthur Foundation Fellowship, the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture; and the Alpert Award in the Arts–Visual Arts, and an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from The Maryland Institute and College of Art.  In 2017, he received the Pennsylvania Governor’s Distinguished Arts Award and became a recipient as a USA Knight Fellow awarded by United States Artists and the Guggenheim Fellowship. Most recently, he received the CAA 2018 Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement.  Osorio was featured in the first PBS Art21 series and was recognized with the Legacy Award from the Smithsonian Institute Latino Initiative, Washington, DC.