Octavio Campos biography
Posted by: Camposition
Dancer, Choreographer
Style: Dance Theater, Other
Nationality: American
Style: Dance Theater, Other
Octavio Campos
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Octavio Campos is a Miami born Cuban-American transdisciplinary artist. He has been collaborating as a dancer, performance provocateur, arts advocate, glbtq activist, educator and choreographer in theater, dance, music, opera, circus, cabaret, television, film and the visual arts for the past 25 years, with over 100 professional credits. He studied dance and composition at the State University of New York at Purchase, Martha Graham School, Folkwang Schule of Pina Bausch the Lincoln Center Director's Lab and alumni of Creative Capital professional development program. His work has been performed in theaters and opera houses throughout Europe, North and South America. He has collaborated within the works of Robert Wilson, Philip Glass and Vivienne Newport, among others. Campos was honored at the Berliner Theater Treffen 2001 with an honorable mention award for his choreography, Miami Choreographers Fellowship for 2005 & 2009 and Interdisciplinary Arts Fellow 2010 for the State of Florida. He has given master classes and workshops worldwide, notably at the Florida Dance Festival, Catholic University Belgium, Centro Cultural Lima, Frankfurt Schule de Darstellender Kunst, The Theater Offensive, St. Petersburg Music Hall in Russia and the Broward Correctional Institute for Women in Florida. As a commercial artist and producer he has worked for Circ X, Spiegel World, Cirque du Solei, Bacardi, MySPACE Latino, Merck, Shell, Ferrari, Def Jam Records, and Donald Trump. Upon his return to Miami from an extensive performance career in Germany, Campos founded the interdisciplinary performance ensemble, Camposition, whose productions are being commissioned by the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami Dade College, Dade Community Foundation, City of Miami Beach, Florida Arts Council and PS 122, New York. His theatrical performances are subversive in nature and challenge assumptions of gender and politics always shaking up the status quo. He was on faculty at the New World School of the Arts, where he has served the dance, theater and music divisions from 1995 - 2009 teaching his original style of dance theater technique. Currently he is the Arts Coordinator at the Academy of Arts and Minds Charter High School in Coconut Grove and on the Artistic Disciplines advisory committee for the National Endowment for the Arts. |
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My work is associate, subversive, and provocative - a direct response of how I see, represent and feel about what is happening in the world right now. Reality, irony and phenomenon inform my process. My work digs deep inside of social ills and exposes the beauty in ugly things by deflowering contemporary life. As I research the past and present realities of our human condition (especially my roots which are in Miami) I am provoked by the surrealistic acts of staged sensuality, political corruption and the self-destructive practices engendered by the cult of the "perfect body". This fuels my hunger to comment and make new work. By pushing the boundary between all art forms, especially dance, theater and activism, I feel a deep responsibility to my world to respond actively through my expression. I am interested in misrepresented and under served communities and figuring out theatrical ways to take their misunderstood invisible voices and turn them into thought provoking experiences. My process and daily interactions with life help me figure out where society places their edges. I then take each memory, each struggle, each situation and use those stories as frames to define my visions. When these stories collide, the structural boundary I've set up momentarily collapses. I then see a space where freedom, laughter and permission reigns. I truly care to embrace that space and will continue to sculpt it whenever I can with guttural, instinctual and controversial themes, creating front edge dance theater compositions that illuminate a journey of hope and compassion for all. August 2010 Miami, FL Octavio Campos |
