Pepatián

MERIAN SOTO

MERIANSOTO

Bessie-award winning choreographer Merian Soto, along with visual artist and MacArthur Fellow Pepon Osorio and choreographer Patricia Bradshaw, founded Pepatian in 1983 as an artists' collective. As Artistic Director and Co-Founder of Pepatian, she created several ground-breaking performance works in the South Bronx: Familias and Historias. With assistance from Pepatian, she founded her company, Merian Soto Dance & Performance, creating works that centered on the use of Salsa -- the dance and music of Pan-Latino collective experiences -- as source and subject. She created a series of multidisciplinary dance-theater works celebrating Salsa: Asi se baila un Son/How to Dance a Son, Prequel (a): Deconstruction of a Passion for Salsa, and La Maquina del Tiempo/The Time Machine.

Ms. Soto has been creating and presenting solo, group, and collaborative pieces in her native Puerto Rico, across the US and internationally since the mid-seventies. She is an Associate Professor of Dance at Temple University.

In 2006, she changed the name of her company to more accurately reflect her new investigative movement work. With Merian Soto/Performance Practice, Ms. Soto is shaping performance experiences in nature in order to experience their evolution over time, the seasons, temperature, and weather. She is currently making her creative research project through 16 performances in Wissahickon Park over the four seasons. To learn more about her One Year Wissahickon Park Project, please visit:
http://meriansoto.blogspot.com/

Ms. Soto was selected for inclusion in the Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour Roster. Funding may be available to support performance engagements with presenters in DC, DE, MD, NJ, NY, OH, PA, VA, WV and the U.S. Virgin
Islands.