Luis Lara Malvacias
spinet pieces	A dance piece
link	www.danceinsider.com/f109_1.html
country	USA, Paraguay
bio	Born in Venezuela Luis Lara Malvacías is a choreographer, dancer, designer and visual artist. He is a graduate of The Instituto Superior de Danza in Caracas, Venezuela, and became a member of the company Espacio Alterno, dancing in the works of David Zambrano, Jeremy Nelson and Mark Tompkins among others. In New York he has danced for Marguerita Guergue, Yoshiko Chuma, Jeremy Nelson and in his own choreography. He performed with the company of John Jasperse, winning the Group Performance Award at the Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales de Bagnolet in Paris. His choreography has been shown in the Festival de Jóvenes Coreógrafos in Caracas, and he created two dances for the Venezuelan company “Espacio Alterno” - Pescando Agujas (1993) and Buenaventura (1994) which have been performed throughout Venezuela, in Colombia and in Spain. He performed an evening of works at the Casa del Artista, Caracas, in September 1994. He has also created work for the New York repertory company Gotham Group. In New York his improvisation and choreography have been performed at University Settlement, Context Studios and Mulberry Street Theater among others and his work NoN was performed at the Joyce SoHo in October of 1999. He created “blood blew blush” for his second full evening of work presented at Williamsburg Arts Nexus in November, 2002. He has presented four shared evenings of work with Jeremy Nelson - A Skeleton in the Closet (Danspace Project at St Mark’s Church, 1995), Beware of Dog, (Danspace Project, 1996), Di- Agnosis (PS 122, May 1998) and in October 2000 Lara shared another evening with Jeremy Nelson presenting his work Pain-Stake at Danspace at Saint Mark’s Church . The programs included Lara’s performance-installations and sets as well as his choreography. Di-Agnosis was also performed at The First International Dance Festival at Connecticut College in June 1998. His first collaborative choreography with Nelson, Morphylactic, was performed as a work-in-progress at the Painted Bride Arts Center in Philadelphia in November 1998, and premiered at Dance Theater Workshop in February 1999 and was presented in Nuremberg, Germany, in May, 2001.He most recently performed a collaborative duet with Jeremy Nelson at TanzFabrik in Berlin, La Porta in Barcelona-Spain and in Festival Mercosur in Santiago de Chile. In the summer of 2003 he taught and performed at the International Dance Summer Festival in Japan. Recently he worked as an assistant for choreographer Jeremy Nelson in the creation of work for the third year students at the Northern School of Dance in Leeds, England. Since 1998 in New York Lara Malvacías conceived and created an ongoing series of innovative structured improvised installations/performances at the Greenspan Center in Williamsburg with several dancers and live musicians performing within a set and installations also created by Lara; This was the base for Instalacion Sur 2001, a project that involved a tour of 3 countries in South America—Colombia, Chile y Venezuela-- with a one week residency in each country, involving teaching and performing structured improvisations in an installation-environment created for the event. For the spring of 2003 he will present the Latino American Dance: Not Festival Project to continue the process of investigation and exchange as well as the construction of relationships initiated already with Instalación Sur.  In June 2000 at the Asyl Gallery in Chelsea-NY, Lara Malvacías presented Purchase, an interactive performance installation, that challenged the usual perspective of viewer and performer; the audience has the opportunity of choosing the dancer(s)-set-music-costumes and seeing their own performances in a chosen space. During the spring of 2003 He created the Latino American Dance: Not Festival Project, a 5-week event that took place in New York. The first three weeks (April 14 to May 4th) were dedicated to education and cultural exchange. In the last two weeks (May 5th to 18th), Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church co-presented two weeks of performances in New York City, in association with Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center. The first week of these performances included LINK, a dance in four sections created by Lara Malvacías and performed by 3 companies from the three Latin American Countries and one section performed by Latino Americans dancers based in  New York. For the second week he curates a shared program for the Not Festival including works by the participating companies and choreographers from Latin America living and working in New York. He holds a BFA in Visual Arts from the Universidad Central de Venezuela and completed the Certification in Painting from the Arts Students League of New York. As a visual artist he has exhibited his work in Venezuela, Spain, Baltimore and New York, and has designed both costumes and sets for his own dances and those of Jeremy Nelson. He has designed costumes for Allan Good in New York and for companies in Greece and New Zealand as well as the sets for Yoshiko Chuma’s Unfinished Symphony; the sets and costumes for Bill Young and Dancers’ Fault and Again, Then Soar in New York. In January of 2003 he designed Set and Costumes for Phoenix Dance in England and recently designed costumes and set for Jeremy Nelson choreography at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance. Lara M. was a 1998-1999 Movement Research Artist-in Residence and was selected again as a Movement Research Artist-in Residence in 2002-2003. Among other techniques his training has included many forms of Release and improvisation, but he has studied principally Klein Technique with Barbara Mahler for the past ten years and with Jeremy Nelson. Now he is studying Alexander Technique with June Ekman and BMC( Body Mind Centering) with Roseanne Spradlin. He has taught at Movement Research, Dance Space Center, CSV Cultural & Educational Center and The Greenspan Center in New York, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Centro Cultural Mistral in Chile, I.S.D., IUESAPAR and in the Grupo ThejaDanza in Venezuela, International Dance Summer Festival in Japan, The Northern School of Dance in Leeds, England, Connecticut College and in Nuremberg- Germany.