In Conversation with Kianí del Valle

Kianí del Valle is a Puerto Rican born, Berlin and LA based dancer, choreographer, director and performance curator whose expansive practice has taken her around the globe. From London’s Barbican to LA’s Getty Museum, she has collaborated extensively with some of the most exciting names in music and performance – Aphex Twin, LSDXOXO, Objekt, Floating Points and Ziúr, to name a few. With a background in painting and sculpture, Kianí’s practice situates dance at the centre of an interdisciplinary ecosystem of art – in which movement, film, photography, architecture, cinema, installation, technology and sound work in symbiosis. 

“I felt very misunderstood in the dance world,” she explains to me, over the screen. She sits upon a green velvet sofa in what I assume to be a cafe, a faint chime of cutlery and cups the ambience to our conversation. Her dark curls are pinned behind her ears with a clip that she occasionally readjusts. “The way I wanted to dance when I first started was so transdisciplinary, and people didn’t really understand. I really feel that dance is a synergy with other disciplines. It cannot exist alone. After developing my solo practice for nearly 20 years, I began to feel curious as to how I could translate that into other bodies. And I was also curious as to whether these other bodies too felt misunderstood by the dance world.” 

It was this thought, this curiosity, that birthed the KDV Dance Ensemble in 2016 – since renamed the KDV Performance group. While Kianí had been touring solo for several years, it  wasn’t until 2020 that the dance group had their official premiere at Berlin’s Funkhaus, in collaboration with Floating Points, Lotic and RavenSince then, they’ve performed at Biennales, Berlin Art Week, Berlinische Galerie – each performance more impressive than the last. Around the same time of these shows, Kianí’s father passed away after a 32 year battle with cancer, which propelled her into a state of introspection. “I had a lot of questions about what I was doing. I felt selfish for being an artist in Berlin, while my family was in Puerto Rico grieving this huge loss. I felt completely lost. But I sacrificed everything for my career – dance is the only thing I know.” 

It was during this time that the concept for the group’s upcoming show, CORTEX, at Sónar Festival was conceived. “Around two weeks before my dad passed, he began to slowly lose his sight. When he started losing his speech, he began to write. But then he lost the ability to move his hands in that way, so all he had left was touch and sound. I’d ask if he’d want to hear a particular song, and he’d squeeze your hand to signal yes or no. I found it really fascinating that even though he was losing the ability to speak, he still had his consciousness and could make choices. 

“The interest and curiosity toward the human brain, particularly the temporal lobe and the cortex, fed into my writing and I started writing a piece called “Lobulo Temporal” or “Temporal lobe”, which is that part of the brain that my dad last had activated. I started doing research into the gamma waves inside the brain, and found that the brain stays alive for a long time despite being inside a dying body – which would essentially prove the hypothesis of life flashing before your eyes when you die. This formed the basis of what then became CORTEX. But, when it came to rehearsing with the group, it just felt too emotional. It was too soon and I couldn’t continue it. And so, it was put it in a drawer for a while.” 

While the idea remained tucked away, Kianí centred her focus on reframing the ensemble into something she felt more aligned with as a multidisciplinary artist. She shifted the name from “Dance Ensemble” to “Performance Group”. The word performance, she feels, bears more freedom in terms of the potentiality of movement and what’s possible within it. Dance, on the other hand, still seems to have associations with institutionalised ways of working and thinking – something which, from what I understand about Kianí, doesn’t align with her method of working.

“Even though the group has my name, it’s very much a relationship of sharing. Nobody is above the other, there’s no hierarchy. Creation is a space for all of us, and we’re all equally important to the process. I think that’s something that for most dancers working with me, they really appreciate that. Because, you know, it’s very rare to work in a dance company like that.” 

It wasn’t until Sónar reached out to Kianí to produce something for this year’s edition, that the idea deep inside that drawer came back into play. Prior to this collaboration, Kianí has worked with Sónar on a number of dance pieces for musicians and as a perfomer in her own right at the festival – but this year is a little different. Rather than allowing dance to fade into the background of the music, Sónar are positioning dance at the foreground as its own medium entirely (and, rightly so), which makes this year’s edition incredibly interesting. Instead of being asked to compose a piece for a musician, Kianí was asked to choreograph an entire performance with her dance group – their first since the “rebranding”. 

“It felt like the perfect moment to bring out the idea of CORTEX,” she begins. “I already have had four years of therapy. I feel so grateful to be my father’s daughter, and to perform this piece at this year’s edition of the festival feels like the best way to honour him. Working with other dancers is really interesting too, once you share an idea with them it becomes theirs too. And they can embody and interpret it in their own way.” 

“How did it work, with translating such an emotional experience into the bodies of others?” I ask. 

“Everybody has their own history and their own experiences and their own knowledge. We all see the world in different ways. Every performance group is just a way to bring those ideas into more entities. Therefore crazy things happen after that. And it’s always super revealing. I spoke to the group about the gamma waves, and this sort of intangible limbo between life and death. I asked people what would keep them in the limbo, and what would bring them back out of it, back to life. It was a really beautiful sharing experience.” 

“What keeps you in limbo?” I ask. 

“Grief and love. I feel I am good at creating community, I have a big motherly energy formed by the loss that I’ve gone through in my life. I keep going, even when things are crumbling down.” 

CORTEX, then, is a piece that resumes and encapsulates four years of healing. The show, split into four acts, explores sites of displacement and solitude, questioning their psychological state through somatic embodiment. Act one encapsulates the limbo, each dancer tailoring the idea of limbo to their own lives. The second act is the invocation – the thing that takes one from the state of limbo. Act three is collective awakening, which is the introduction of the dancers moving together – and then the final and fourth act is these bodies reaching the real world once again. Visuals become catalysts in the story and existence of the movers, with Barcelona-based visual artists Hamill Industries creating the projected imagery, the fourth year Kianí is collaborating with them.

Rhythmic musical patterns, constructed by Tayhana (the Argentinian DJ, producer and central figure in the Club Latinx genre) shatter the confines of corporal isolation. Tayhana’s process, Kianí explains, was watching the dance and responding directly to what unfolded. “Tayhana has been slaying in the Mexico scene. This performance felt like a great moment for me to celebrate being a South American woman. I’m so proud.” 

Kianí tells me that this collaboration with Tayhana won’t end when the festival is over. In fact the two are working together to release an album, with KDV Performance Group and Hamill Industries heading the visuals based off CORTEX for Tayhana’s sounds. This will mark the continuation of CORTEX, which is set to go on its own tour in 2025. With this, I see the excitement ripple through her face.

To end the conversation, I ask Kianí what dance means to her. 

“Dance is my way of understanding how to better live in the world. It’s an instrument of understanding. I feel very lucky to have dancers that I can share that with too. It’s funny, I’ve been working my whole life in this space, but it feels like everything is starting right now.”

Credits

CORTEX is a special commission for kdv.performance.group by Sónar and CTM

Director, Choreographer: Kianí del Valle
Visual Artists: Hamill Industries
Original Sound Score: Tayhana
Creative Producer, Concept Dramaturge: Elizabeth Hinojos
Assistant Choreographer, Creation Process Dramaturge: Rubén Nsue
Project Manager, Producer: Masha Mitroshina
Costume Stylist: @lennibubi
Lighting Designer: Catalina Joy
Dancers & Co-Creators: Alvin Collantes, Amanda Donato, Nana, Kianí del Valle
Production Assistant: Irene Fernández Arcas
KDV Intern Support: Bence Ungvári
Costume Styling Assistant: Bob Schroeder
Photography: Feyd and Romo