UC San Diego Theatre & Dance to Welcome Veronica Santiago Moniello for thesisWORKS 2017

The UC San Diego Department of Theatre and Dance presents thesisWORKS 2017: Before the horses crash into the ground, and then the ground. A dance performance by Verónica Santiago Moniello.

thesisWORKS showcases the culmination of dance research over the course of graduate studies in Dance at UC San Diego. This year, MFA Candidate Verónica Santiago Moniello explores the potential of bodies and motion in space while simultaneously confronting subject material that has inspired her intellectual and scholarly pursuits over her time at UCSD in Before the horses crash into the ground, and then the ground.

The show runs December 7-8 at 7:30pm, and December 9 at 2pm. Performances are at the Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre in the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Theatre District on UC San Diego's campus: 2910 La Jolla Village Drive, La Jolla, CA. For information about parking, see the website.

Tickets are $20 for regular performances. Subscriptions and group rates are available. Student tickets are $10 for regular performances. Faculty, staff, alumni and senior citizens discounts available as well. Tickets can be purchased online or by calling the box office at (858) 534-4574.

The performers include Verónica Santiago Moniello (Dancer Maker/Mover), Orlando Rodriguez (Dance Maker/Mover), Barbara Byers (Vocalist/Performer), and Benjamin Rempel (Percussionist/Performer).

The production team includes Verónica Santiago Moniello (Conception & Dance Making/Costume Designer), Javier Fresneda (Creative Consultancy), Samantha Rojales (Scenic Designer), Barbara Byers (Costume Designer), Joel Britt (Lighting Designer), Mextly Almeda (Assistant Lighting Designer), John Burnett (Sound/Projections Designer), MaeAnn Ross (Assistant Sound Designer), Kasson Marroquin (Production Stage Manager), Willie Mae Michiels (Assistant Stage Manager), Carissa Cash (Wardrobe Supervisor), Dylan Davison (Production Carpenter), Andres Lagang (Costume Crew), Isaac Cotter (Projections Operator/A2), Katherine Oberman (Light Board Op), Chloris Li (Run Crew), Sylvette Katy Teman (Run Crew), and Sofia Zaragosa (Run Crew).

Director Verónica Santiago Moniello is a Venezuelan dancer and choreographer based in Southern California. Her work deals with memory and the idea of birth, with antagonist subjects of resistance, utopian bodies, and dreams. She holds a BA in Dance from Folkwang Universität der Künste (Essen, Germany.) Recent projects collaborations have been presented at Movement Research (NYC, U.S.), Bauhaus (w/ Andrea Canepa, Dessau, Germany.) Previous works have been presented in Mexico, Venezuela, Belize, Germany, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Spain and the U.S. "Before the horses crash into the ground, and then the ground" is part of her ongoing research "The Body that has Been Possessed" awarded by Tinker Fellowships, CILAS: Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and The Friends of California. In 2017 Verónica founded Habitual, a platform-based studio that explores the possibilities of movement.

Director's Statement: Before the horses...is a piece that reflects on the concept of territory -the description of a space- by using complementary bodily approaches: chants, music, percussion, dance.

The piece introduces these notions to the audience through the construction of a plural zone, a scenography conceived as an archipelago where every performer has its own autonomy while keeping a shared sense of kinship.

This enclave has also its own extension; a skin that covers and sustains, embracing the scenic space as a responsive texture where every performer dwells.

Before the horses is a space in suspension, the interim between leaping and plunging, from free fall toward its crystallization into a fleshy state. But the void is not a funny affair though; in the interim, bodies are deprived of agency. Due to that, there's nothing we can do but to try (again and again) to build actual relations within the void. As a result, we are less interested in depicting apocalyptic landscapes that acknowledging the tectonic texture of a silent earth. The trope of a stumbling horse will be told as an image of the majestic in its encounter with failure, with realness, with dirt. As an interstice between given narratives that understood the figure of the horse as either a donor of life and the harbinger of death.

This suspended space allows us to share the unknown, the intimacy of our personal paths; turning the private into a collective realization of the act of sharing. In this regard, what is visible in the piece mirrors the way in which the creative process has been developed; a generous and vulnerable panorama.

Before the horses... is the third instantiation of a trilogy of dance pieces focused on three main concepts: birth, being, and territory. This piece has been co-created with Orlando Rodriguez, and its research began in Vilnius (Lithuania) at the Arts Printing House during the summer of 2017 and continued theretofore at UCSD's Dance & Theater program.

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