Isa Leal (they/isa) is a Puerto Rican somatic researcher, performing artist and PhD candidate in Performance Studies with a designated emphasis in Practice as Research (UC Davis) raised in Richmond, Virginia and hailing from Baltimore, MD. Their dissertation project explores their performance research practice: Dialoguing the Unconscious and the site of their white-passing body as a transmedia activist tool for co-ontological agency. Their participatory performance inventions are practical tools that are inherently accessible and occultist. They are interested in the connection between movement experimentation and the experience of being human. Their work is often viscerally engaging and invites audiences to examine perception.
Through their developing methodology, they are investigating the question: How do we share/acknowledge knowledge that can’t (in a “regular” way) be seen? They are deeply invested in pre-colonized ways of knowing.
Isa has facilitated various large scale immersive events as an organizer and/or director, and worked interdisplinarliy as an artist- scholar in residencies and labs ( SEEDS, Kenedy Krieger Center for Nuerodevelopemental and Imaging Research, Group Improvisation Lab Labs ). Internationally, Isa has been recognized as a leading somatic and performance researcher as a member of Figure Space (a group selected by Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson). They feel honored to have had the privilege of performing, studying, and co-inventing with living legends in the field of somatic research while working to invite connection and co-education between communities.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My performances intend the deconstruction of the audience-performer hierarchy by inviting the audience to make choices that directly affect the choreography of actions. I find that in these actions: acknowledgement, empathic engagement and agency, arrive as useful tools towards social change.