I n t e r a k t i o n s - L a b o r

 

 

Isabel Valverde

(Lissabon)

 

Interdisciplinary performer/ researcher in new media and technologies

 

Isabel Valverde is a performer, interdisciplinary choreographer and researcher originally from Portugal. Isabel has recently completed her Ph.D. in Dance History and Theory from U.C. Riverside. Her dissertation is titled ³Interfacing Dance and Technology: a theoretical framework for performance in the digital domain.²

She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at U.C. Irvine funded by the E.U./Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portugal). She holds a MA in Interdisciplinary Arts from the Inter-Arts Center, San Francisco State University. She was the recipient of a Fulbright/I.I.E. fellowship and the PRAXIS XXI Program/F.C.T.

Her dance studies include a BA in Dance from the Lisbon Technical University, the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, emphasizing the study of improvisational dance forms with Simone Forti, Mary Fulkerson, Yochico Chuma, and Eva Karczag, among others. Developing her experimental solo and group work since1986, Isabel performed in Lisbon, Amsterdam, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. As a soloist she salients After the White Shower (1986), and Tomar Corpo (1991), focusing on basic physical experiences and the impact movement¹s plastic residues in space. Baixo (1989) with musician/composer Cees W. Schmidt marked the collaborative development of her hybrid interest in movement/sound, which the ambivalent interactive and multimedia potential of digital technologies has been contributing to expand, to include visual (and medical) imagery, such as in Imagine You Later with Sean Seward (1999), and Tailor Made with Margaret Tedesco (2000) in San Francisco.

Since 2002 Isabel has been developing My Fado Dance: What Portugueseness, a work-in-progress solo using the Portuguese Fado music, and video, in the Los Angeles area. Towards the familiarization with new embodiments and human interactions as well as the continuum of actualization and virtualization, Isabel has been also collaborating in several participatory responsive installation projects, such as Blind Date with Yiannis Melanitis, Monaco Dance Forum (2002), Dancing in the Active Space, with John Crawford, Lisa Naugle, and Frederic Bevilacqua, U.C.Riverside/Museum of Photography (2002).

Presently she is working on IN TOUCH, a mixed reality environment based on costumed made touch sensor wearables, with Victor Zordan, Kim Chi, V Sundar, and Paulo Chagas, being presented in a first phase at the Siggraph¹s Cyberfashion Show, Los Angeles. She published ³Blind Date: a participatory installation,² in Body, Space, and Technology Journal, V4, and ³Catching the Ghosts in Ghostcatching: Choreographing Gender and Race in Riverbed/Bill T. Jones' Virtual Dance,² in Extensions: the online journal of embodied technologies, V2. As curator and producer she initiated the Evenings of Video Dance, a periodical show of 'live' and dance for the camera work at Artists' Television Access, San Francisco (1999-2001)