Wally Cardona is a choreographer, dancer and educator. He began his studies in Klein Technique™ with Susan Klein and Barbara Mahler in 1989, immediately after graduating from The Juilliard School. As a choreographer, for several years he created works that demanded highly controlled conditions in order to be made, gradually growing in scale and involving more and more objects. In response to the amount of material waste and energetic burnout involved, in 2009, he began a softer process of undoing, initiating intimate collaborations where practice could mutate in proximity to others. Examples include The Set Up: Island Ghost Sleep Princess Time Story Show, 7 dances made over the course of six years with choreographer Jennifer Lacey, international master artists I Nyoman Catra (Bali), Proueng Chhieng (Cambodia), Junko Fisher (Okinawa), Saya Lei (Myanmar), Jean-Christophe Paré (Paris), Heni Winahyuningsih (Java) and Kapila Venu (India) and composers Jonathan Bepler, Peter Drungle, Reiko Fueting and Megan Schubert, all culminating in a 12-hour program presented over two weekends at different sites on Governors Island as a part of River to River Festival 2017; TOOL IS LOOT, resulting from games of aesthetic disorientation, made with Lacey and Bepler; Interventions 1-7, encounters between Cardona and the requests and opinions of a sommelier, an astrophysicist, an architect, a community activist, among others; and A Light Conversation, a physical dialogue on aesthetics vs. ethics, love, commitment and sacrifice, made with choreographer Rahel Vonmoos. As a performer, Cardona has appeared in works by David Gordon and Deborah Hay and in Matthew Barney’s film, Secondary. Honors include a Bessie Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, NYFA Fellowship, Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, Creative Capital Award, and Doris Duke Artist Award. Born in California and raised in New Mexico, Cardona lives and works in New York City.
