Arthur Avilés (born 1963) is an American Bessie Award-winning

dancer Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoire ...

and

choreographer Choreography is the art or practice of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies (or their depictions) in which motion or form or both are specified. ''Choreography'' may also refer to the design itself. A choreographer is one who c ...

of Puerto Rican descent. Avilés was born in

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, and raised in

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and the

Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

. He graduated from

Bard College Bard College is a private liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and is within the Hudson River Historic District—a National Historic Landmark. Founded in 1860, ...

, a liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. After graduating from Bard, he became a member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and toured internationally with the company for eight years 1987 to 1995. Mr. Avilés began his own company, the Arthur Aviles Typical Theatre (AATT), in 1996 in

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, and moved the company to the Bronx that same year. In addition to his work with AATT, Avilés became the company choreographer for the Paris-based theatrical company Faim de Siecle, and has choreographed a series of productions that have been performed in the United States and in France. In December 1998, he co-founded with Charles Rice-González BAAD! - The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, a new performance and workshop space in the

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, a warehouse in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx. In October 2013, the organization moved to Westchester Square into a gothic revivalist building on the campus of St. Peter's Episcopal Church. ''

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'' has said that BAAD! is "a funky and welcoming performance space." In addition to the Bessie Award, Avilés received an Arts and Letters Award from his alma mater in 1995, a BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own) Award from the

Bronx Council on the Arts The Bronx Council on the Arts (established 1962), is an art based culture agency that has grown to become the official cultural agency of the Bronx, New York City. It provides a “lifeline” to more than 4,800 artists and over 250 arts and comm ...

(BCA) in 1999, a PRIDE (Puerto Rican Initiative to Develop Empowerment) Award honoring outstanding contributions and services to the Puerto Rican, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term ...

) Communities, a 2004 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, in 2008 he received an award from NYC Comptroller Bill Thompson and a NYC Mayor's Arts Award, and 2015 received an honorary doctorate from Bard College. In 2005, AATT was among 406

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arts and social service institutions to receive part of a $20 million grant from the

Carnegie Corporation The Carnegie Corporation of New York is a philanthropic fund established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to support education programs across the United States, and later the world. Carnegie Corporation has endowed or otherwise helped to establis ...

, which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Anna Kisselgoff Anna Kisselgoff (born 12 January 1938) is a dance critic and cultural news reporter for ''The New York Times''. She began at the ''Times'' as a dance critic and cultural news reporter in 1968, and became its Chief Dance Critic in 1977, a role she h ...

of ''The New York Times'' wrote, "If you don’t know Mr. Aviles, you haven’t seen one of the great modern dancers of the last 15 years." Jennifer Dunning, ''The New York Times'' dance critic, described his work as follows: "Arthur Aviles has developed an individual voice and style that might be compared to bold street theater and poster art, communicating his truths about life as seen as a gay male Puerto Rican through simple narratives that are always colorful and often poignant and amusing." Since 1991, Aviles has collaborated extensively with his

first cousin Most generally, in the lineal kinship system used in the English-speaking world, a cousin is a type of familial relationship in which two relatives are two or more familial generations away from their most recent common ancestor. Commonly, ...

, the comedian and performer Elizabeth Marrero. He has also collaborated with other gay Puerto Rican performers such as Jorge Merced. Avilés is publicly gay, as he has indicated in interviews, and many of his dance pieces explore gay topics.La Fountain-Stokes, Lawrence
"A Naked Puerto Rican Faggot from America: An Interview with Arthur Avilés."
''CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies'' 19.1 (Spring 2007): 314-29.

References

Additional bibliography

* Rivera-Servera, Ramón. "Latina/o Queer Futurities: Arthur Aviles Takes on the Bronx." ''Ollantay Theater Magazine'' 15.29-30 (2007): 127-46. * Rivera-Servera, Ramón. "Building Home: Arthur Aviles's Choreography of the Public Space." in ''Performing Queer Latinidad: Dance, Sexuality, Politics'' (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 46-93. * La Fountain-Stokes, Lawrence
"A Naked Puerto Rican Faggot from America: An Interview with Arthur Avilés."
''CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies'' 19.1 (Spring 2007): 314-29.

External links

Arthur Aviles Theatre Company

BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance {{DEFAULTSORT:Aviles, Arthur 1963 births 20th-century American dancers 21st-century American dancers Living people American choreographers American male dancers American people of Puerto Rican descent Bard College alumni Bessie Award winners Gay artists Modern dancers Entertainers from the Bronx People from Queens, New York People from Long Island LGBT Hispanic and Latino American people 21st-century LGBT people

See also

References

Additional bibliography

External links