Bouquet - by Mariana Valencia (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Working between choreography, autobiography and poetry, Mariana Valencia reckons with individualism in her everyday life as a dancer as she moves across the United States, Mexico, the Balkans and into the geography of her past.

Review Quotes

"Unassuming, deceptively touching...Bouquet is a multidimensional monologue, as physical and musical as it is verbal."--Siobhan Burke, The New York Times

"The visual and verbal alternate equally like in John Berger's Ways of Seeing or Claudia Rankine's Citizen. Valencia's works, in all their forms, seem to be on their way to creating a modest comédie humaine--a network of stories that together paint a portrait of a time and place."--Gillian Jakab, The Brooklyn Rail

"In Bouquet, the notoriously difficult task of translating dance into language is taken on full force by a master practitioner. Mariana Valencia's book is both a document of the unarchivable and a "shout out to the apocalyptic world we're living in."--Paul Legault

About the Author

Mariana Valencia works through dance. She was born in Chicago amidst multicultural collaboration, went to college with a vast constellation of queers in Massachusetts, and in 2006 moved to New York to live as a choreographer. Over the years, Valencia's work has turned in on herself, making self-narrative performances that evoke algorithmic imagery comprised of choreography, ethnography, and memoir. Valencia has held numerous residencies and received awards for her choreography, the most notable being a 2023 Creative Capital Award, a 2018 Bessie Award for Outstanding "Breakout" Choreographer, a 2019 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Extended Life grant, a 2018 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant to Artists Award, and a 2015-16 Jerome Travel and Study grant; she was also an artist in the Whitney Biennial 2019. Valencia is a founding member of the No Total reading group and she has been the co-editor of Movement Research's Critical Correspondence. She's worked with artists AK Burns, Elizabeth Orr, Em Rooney, Fia Backstrom, Geo Wyeth, Guadalupe Rosales, Jazzy Romero, Juliana May, Jules Gimbrone, Kim Brandt, Lauren Bakst, Lydia Okrent, Morgan Bassichis, MPA, O'Helen, robbinschilds and Heera Gandhu. Her commissions include: Abrons Arts Center, Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Danspace Project, Performance Space New York, and The Shed; her work has toured in Norway, the Balkans, and the UK.