Martita (Pichu) Abril  is a performer, choreographer, and teaching artist from the border city of Tijuana, México. She has collaborated with dance artists and companies including Lux Boreal, Kim Brandt, Yanira Castro, Yoshiko Chuma, Milka Djordevich, Tess Dworman, Daria Fain and Robert Kocik, Kat Galasso, Allyson Green, Abigail Levine, Mina Nishimura, Cori Olinghouse, Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born, Will Rawls, David Thompson, Larissa Velez-Jackson, and Cathy Weis. Martita was a performer in Simone Forti’s Dance Constructions and the Handles exhibition by Haegue Yang at the Museum of Modern Art. In 2023 she was part of the Dance and Process (DAP) artist in residency program at The Kitchen in partnership with The American Academy of Arts and Letters and she is currently in The Movement Research (MR) Artist-in-Residence Program, funded, in part, by Mertz Gilmore Foundation. She also continues to guide workshops in Bushwick for Spanish speaking familias who recently arrived in NYC, through the iLAND (Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art Nature and Dance) program by Jennifer Monson. Martita co-curates In/Between, the annual immigrant artist group exhibition at New York Live Arts in partnership with NYFA’s Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program originally created in 2019 by Yanira Castro, Martita, and Poppy DeltaDawn. She is currently the Coordinator of MR at the Judson Memorial Church Monday night series, the Trisha Brown Dance Company’s Tour Manager, and continues to mentor Immigrant artists as part of the NYFA Coaching program. She resides at the border of Greenpoint and East Williamsburg, Brooklyn with her partner and 35 plants.

Martita Abril takes a sledgehammer to a wall while balancing on one foot. She wears a black dress and her hair in a braid. Photo by Julieta Cervantes.
ID: Martita Abril takes a sledgehammer to a wall while balancing on one foot. She wears a black dress and her hair in a braid. Photo by Julieta Cervantes.