Marielys Burgos Meléndez

AfroBorikua artist-scholar, researcher, somatic educator, writer, dancer, and audio describer. She is a  2023 Bessie´s Award nominee for Outstanding Performance (Ensemble) alongside Rafael Cañals and Christopher Unpezverde Núñez for their work in The Circle.

Marielys holds an MA in Dance Studies and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Critical Dance Studies at UC Riverside.
Since 2014 she has investigated experiences, poetics, and narratives of mobility-migration-dislocation from a practice as a research framework. Her current research focuses on Indigenous, Black, and African descent experimental dance makers and intersects ancestral and embodied spiritualities,  mobility-migration-displacement, placemaking, eroticism, and liberation.

In 2017, she got stranded in Lenapehoking due to Hurricane María and found a home in NYC. While in Lenapehoking, she worked/ performed with Pramila Vasudevan, Antonio Ramos, iele paloumpis, Jill Sigman/ThinkDance, zavé martohardjono -as part of Territory: The Island Remembers, nominated for a 2022 Bessie’s Award for Best Production-, Christopher Unpezverde Núñez, and Yanira Castro/ a canary torsi.

Marielys´ poetic experimental Audio Descriptions have been part of projects like ´deadbird´ film by devynn emory, ´a fuzzy yellow spot´ and The Square by Christopher Unpezverde Núñez, and Sing by Ogemdi Ude, to mention a few. As 2021-2023 Artist-in-Residence at Movement Research, she investigated the presence of Latinx in the ´experimental dance scene´
in NYC, the body as a living archive, contemplative movement, pleasure, and her own ancestral Arawak and African indigenous wisdom.

Errática her first self-published artist book (2019) in collaboration with Taller Asiray/ Yarisa Colón Torres.

  • Artist in Residence
  • 2021 Artist in Residence
  • Faculty
  • 2019 Fall Festival Co-Curator
  • Critical Correspondence Contributor
  • Festival Spring 2024
  • Former Staff
  • MELT Faculty
  • Morning Class Faculty
  • Studies Project Organizer
Photo of Marielys Burgos Meléndez a looking into the camera. She is topless with her hands placed in front of her chest, thumbs almost touching and fingers extending pushing the palms outwards. Her arms are tattooed and the ocean in behind her. Photo by Kyle Kesses.
ID: Photo of Marielys Burgos Meléndez a looking into the camera. She is topless with her hands placed in front of her chest, thumbs almost touching and fingers extending pushing the palms outwards. Her arms are tattooed and the ocean in behind her. Photo by Kyle Kesses.