Ricardo L. De Jesus-Valentin

Biography

Ricardo L. de Jesús-Valentín (Ricky) is a movement artist, teacher, and choreographer born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. His artistic work seeks to use the vocabulary of modern and contemporary dance, the rupture of ballet, visceral experimentation in movement, and concrete performance actions to investigate through the body conceptual and formal concerns. From 2015 to 2019 he was part of the contemporary and experimental dance company Hincapié, directed by Petra Bravo. He has performed in the works of Petra Bravo, Viveca Vázquez, Florence Figols, Ana Sánchez-Colberg, Norberto Collazo, Cristina Lugo, Ángel Arámbula, and Francisco Centeno among many others. In 2019 he was part of the first edition of the Program of Independent Studies in Contemporary Art, Investigation, and Community of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico, where he developed Le Trina, or Bodily Elucubrations for a Manifectation. Ricky holds a BA in philosophy from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus (2013) and a BA in dance from Universidad del Sagrado Corazón (2019). Currently he is working on his MFA in dance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.