LROD
Contributing Core Artist 2016-2024
Dance and Technology artist and educator, Artistic Director Harvard Dance Project
Biography
LROD is originally from El Paso, TX, now residing in Massachusetts, with a career spanning over 20+ years in education, intermedia, and performance. LROD’s expertise lies in re-imaging artistic boundaries through innovative, creative research rooted in radical tenderness. As a vital, interdisciplinary artist/scholar, LROD brings a wealth of experience in daydreaming, surrealism, magic, and sci-fi approaches to any creative or production endeavor. LROD has collaborated with esteemed artists and organizations worldwide, including La Pocha Nostra, Livable Futures, Boston Dance Theater, Alessandro Sousa Pereira, Sara Shelton Mann, Roya Carreras, Passion Fruit Dance Company, Jay Stull & Keenan Taylor Oliphant, Amy O'Neal, Kyle Abraham, Gerard & Kelly, Awilda Rodriguez-Lora, Wideman Davis Dance, Cervantino Film Festival, Dance @30FPS, International Dance Festival, Pat Graney, Wade Madsen, Deb Wolf, and the American Dance Festival’s Movies by Movers. LROD brings a warmly electric environment full of diverse ease, communication, and transparency.
Before receiving her BFA and MFA, LROD worked in the professional dance industry for 14 years as a performer, educator, co-director, and choreographer. LROD received numerous awards and accolades from New England Foundation of the Arts Recipient (NEFA), LiveArts Ireland Residency, Harvard's Provostial Fund Awardee, Michael M. Bromley Fund for Innovations in Dance (2021-2024), Migration, Mobility, and Immobility Grant (MMI), NALAC Leadership Fellow, and Harvard Certificate of Distinction in Teaching Awards 2024-2020 (12x). LROD is sought after for expertise in advocacy, pedagogy, and arts administration, having presented or produced at institutions and festivals such as Joyce Theater, NYU/Steinhardt, Paramount Theater, Wexner Center of the Arts, MetaLab/Berlin, MOCO, and Jacob's Pillow.
Q&A
What makes more livable futures for you?
For me, a pursuit to re-imagine justice, resiliency, and love against the current oppressive or destructive ways of living would be a start in making the future livable. I believe it is crucial to create a realm of care, ethics, and compassion to work towards balance in our overly consumptive world. These liberal acts help to reconstruct/heal dilapidated structures in our social, economic, and industrial ways of living but prioritize these acts within the environmental sphere. As an artist, I think creating performative/experiential environments in a community of co-creation kickstarts the imagination needed to unlock the potential of our future.
A livable future responds to crisis, injustice, and inequality.
A livable future is continuously adapting.
A livable future makes and holds space for all.
A livable future is a possibility manifested through imagination.
A livable future redefines freedom.
A livable future is not always polite.
A livable future is transparent.
A livable future thrives in equity.
A livable future redefines love and care.
What are you reading, viewing, listening to right now?
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (2017), Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (2019) by adrienne maree brown
Chicano and Chicana Art: A Critical Anthology by Jennifer A. González
Black Brown & Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and the Diaspora (2009) edited by Franklin Rosemont and Robin D.G. Kelley
Dawn (2012) by Octavia E. Butler
On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal by Naomi Klein
The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary (Ahmanson-Murphy Fine Arts Imprint) by Ronald Rael
What practices are sustaining you?
Sustaining my practice is daydreaming, hyper creativity in co-creative environments, performance as protest, and ritualized self-care.
Sun’s kiss on my skin
The desert
Aesthetics in environmental design
Home
Community
Daily improvisation
Mi Familia
Napping
Sustento
Artmaking in all its capacities
Deep conversations
Immersing into books/movies/shows
Truth
The moment when I am told something is impossible