Petra Bravo

I am a choreographer who investigates movement from my perspective of life. I truly believe in dance as a manifesto of history. As a choreographer I search for emotions and sensations to establish ideas on realistic themes. Life itself interests me. I experiment and crack open concepts through dance. In my methodologies of working with the body I look for authenticity; an exploratory dance composition that is combative, romantic, sublime, sexual, absurd, and indecipherable. For me, this achieves changes in the behavior of human thought. 

In my choreography it is necessary to decompose the domesticated body and return to other configurations. I use media and interdisciplinary exercises. I work with speech and language in the body in different ways: gestural insinuations, empty observations and misunderstood desires. When I teach or I am in the choreographic process I use language to break stigmas and prejudices in order to dethrone what prevents us from growing. For me, this is also a didactic commitment with the audience; to communicate directly with the viewer, regardless of what they perceive/receive and to challenge the impurity that corrupt political and religious systems so accurately have sold us. The art of dance is part of the evolution and history of a country. It makes us free and independent.

I make dance on the immediate. I dialogue with my dance compositions from the moment I wake up. It is part of my everyday life…it's like making coffee. My art is a refuge for impulses, it protects me to move forward, from my discomfort and accommodations in order to follow the enjoyment that also suffers, that’s how it is when you love. I live with my art on my shoulder. 

At this moment in my long career I’m writing poetry and vulgar thoughts. I want to publish a poetry book along with avant-garde poet Roberto Net Carlo. I also want to create an experimental dance theater production with videos, music and performers to explore phonetic, concrete and visual poetry.

Petra Bravo is an experimental choreographer whose work is inspired by the street and her experiences with everyday manifestations of society’s rampant inequality. Motivated by injustice and the beauty that emanates from confronting and resisting injustices,  Bravo’s main intention is to communicate her discomfort with that inequality as a Cuban and Caribbean woman. When facing the unexpected and absurd nature of life’s many predicaments, Bravo is moved to return to her fascination with the body. Her choreography disrupts harmony, sequential development, and visual comfort, changing and developing as it builds on the styles and interpretations each dancer brings. 

SIMULACRO (2023) was presented at the Julia de Burgos Theater at the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Pierdas in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In this work, Bravo’s choreography explores a social body violated through language—incorporating poetry by Roberto Net Carlo, dancers physically express what it is like to try and speak up without being heard, only to ultimately surrender, physically and mentally exhausted. The work is an attempt to highlight the inequitable colonization of Puerto Rico as a part of America. 

Bravo’s works include Ventarrón + 7% (2019) and Andiamo (2018), which were performed by Hincapié, Bravo’s experimental dance group, at the Bellet de San Juan festivals Encuentro Coreográfico and Inconexo, respectively, at Teatro Alejandro Tapia y Rivera in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. Other works include Instalaciones Coregraficas (2016) and Hincapié Cuerpos de Agua (2015), which took place at the Plaza Juan Morel Campos Fountain, Centro de Bellas Artes in San Juan, Puerto Rico. 

Bravo was honored in 1996 with a choreography retrospective entitled RetroPetraActiva at the Santurse Fine Arts Center. She received the United States Artists Fellowship in 2024. 

Bravo is a professor of modern dance, ballet, and choreography at the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras, at which she created Hincapié in 1999. She is also the founder of two international festivals, The Modern Dance Festival of Puerto Rico and the Choreography Festival for students attending the University.