Kianí Del Valle debuts a new solo at TONO Festival, exploring what it means to live in a broken world. In conversation with Sam Ozer for Elephant.
As part of the closing weekend of the fourth edition of TONO Festival, Kianí Del Valle premiered her solo dance piece “Mundos Rotos,” at Casa del Lago in Mexico City. This first staging integrated del Valle’s direction, choreography, and performance, accompanied by original live music composed and performed by Kelman Duran. Though, this is only the beginning for “Mundos Rotos” (Broken Worlds), a piece that del Valle is expanding into an operatic ensemble with her company KDV Performance Group. TONO Artistic Director Sam Ozer sat down with Kianí to discuss the significance of presenting the piece on March 21st, the anniversary of the Ponce massacre in her native Puerto Rico, the relationship between movement and form, bringing politics into both her personal work and more commercial projects such as choreographing Bad Bunny’s half-time show.
Kianí del Valle’s artistic practice is deeply rooted in the exploration of anthropological, biological, psychological, and sociological phenomena, combining contemporary dance with performance art through an interdisciplinary lens that encompasses film, photography, architecture, pop culture, technology, and sound. In addition to her solo work and directing her eponymous company, she works in the pop space, choreographing movement for projects with Bad Bunny, Travis Scott, and Billie Eilish, amongst others.
In “Mundos Rotos,” del Valle offers a profound reflection on the contemporary global condition, emphasizing the urgent need for mutual human connection, as well as the complex metaphysical and emotional relationships we maintain with the spatial and existential realities that surround us. Mundos Rotos began as a written essay that del Valle reinterpreted as a photographic essay with her company KDV Performance Group and then transformed into a performative piece for a soloist structured in three distinct acts that follow a thematic itinerary: from deconstructed and devastated landscapes, through a stage of urgent physical connection, to an outcome marked by detachment and the consequences of abandoning the bonds that unite us.
In the essay, del Valle writes, “these worlds are broken; they are multiple, shattered, and lost, and I still don’t know how we got here. Broken worlds, whose cracks sink so deep that when we walk, we fear falling into the abyss…But hidden in that rupture is a silent testimony of resistance. Can it blossom? It is a silent call to recognize our shared wounds and seek healing beyond the ruins. Do we have the courage? How deep does your love reach? My love, our love…”
Samantha Ozer: Let’s start with the “Mundos Rotos” solo that you premiered for TONO. The process is that you wrote a text, the text became a photo story, the photo story became a solo piece, and this has plans to grow beyond that? Can you tell me your process of writing the text and how you adapt it?
Kiani del Valle: The process of writing the text was quite spontaneous. I wrote it on a flight from Puerto Rico to Austria last month. And, I was just, like, very saturated by what’s going on in the world, and having a true deep reflection on how we are moving forward from here because we can decide to ignore it, or because there’s such a heavy amount of information that we receive on a daily that I feel like even for mental health, it is kind of important to save yourself from all the information possible, because it is a lot. But then there’s also this guilt trip of not knowing or not caring. So I think one reflection I was having was like, okay, well, can I, can I sit with these thoughts, not consume more information, but what could be some valid questions or concerns that I can have against this situation. And then this text happened in a very organic way.
I then presented it to my mother, who’s a writer. My mom, of course, had notes, but she always has notes. But she was very moved by it, and immediately, I was already discussing similar topics for a potential bigger piece with KDV, my company. But there were a lot of floating ideas. I knew the scale, and I knew that the color red was gonna be there, and I knew a lot of things, but it was not completely cohesive. I think writing this text was like, oh, unconsciously, this is the piece that I’ve been trying to construct.
The photo essay was kind of, like, directing me towards the bigger piece later and then, to be honest, before the shoot of the photo essay I was feeling very uncomfortable because I was like, I kind of want to try this in my body before directing the dancers, you know? I think it’s important for me that I just, like, feel it physically. Not every choreographer’s like that. A lot of choreographers don’t really feel the concepts, but for me, that’s just my process. I prefer to feel and embody all these concepts first, so I can talk from a clear place to the dancers.
Sam: I’m curious about the structure. The solo piece was three acts?
Kiani: Yes!
Sam: Is the group piece also three acts?
Kiani: Yeah. The group has three acts, and the photo essay has three acts, too. The first act is broken beginnings, fragmented beginnings, which I was exploring by dragging myself the whole time, and placing myself behind that fabric, and kind of finding my form. Then Act 2 was descending to chaos. So once I understand that this is like a broken environment, it’s kind of like falling… falling in a crack, and going deep inside in the madness. And then Act 3 is sustain the brokenness, so it’s kind of sad, because there’s not really a resolution. I don’t know what could be the resolution of where we are. How can we sustain the situation instead of stopping it where it is, so it doesn’t get worse, you know what I mean? So, there’s no, like, fairy tale, no Disney Channel positive conclusion. At the end, there’s also kind of an urgency to try to hold and stop before it keeps getting worse. There’s a feeling of sustaining that catastrophe, somehow, holding what’s there so it just doesn’t go into a deeper catastrophe.
Sam: When you’re thinking about choreography, are you thinking more in movement or in shape, or is it the same?
Kiani: When I moved to New York, and I was dancing with Alvin Ailey, I needed to have other jobs, because I was 18, and it wasn’t enough money so I decided to be a nude model for drawing classes. I was coming from painting and sculpture before dance, so then at this point, I’m focusing on dance, but I still love being in the art world, I love the synthetic smell of, like, paint. I love to be in that environment, so I was like, okay, I’ll go to a New York Arts League and see if they are looking for new models, and then they picked me. Then, very quickly, I was recommended to Pratt, and to the New School, and to Cooper Union. I was modeling in, like, seven schools in New York at 18 years old. And then when I turned 19, I was voted the best-nude model of New York City and I was naked on the cover of Time Out New York. It was very cute.
Sam: Oh my god. We need to find those photos!
Kiani: I know. I think somebody found them online, I feel like they’re findable.
But yes, I think there’s been an aspect of performance art, shape, sculpture, and form in my work, inevitably, you know. I think about form a lot, and maybe you’re right. I think there was a lot of thinking of the forms that are broken, and the forms that are trying to glue themselves, and the forms that are kind of rebelling against the system, and so, I think in this case, I did think about form first, and then because the form of mundos rotos is already a form, you know, it’s like you’re talking about the breaking of something, so I did start at form first, and then the movement came after.
Sam: I think there’s a few main shapes that come to mind thinking about the live piece also. There’s a few actions you make, but especially at the end, there’s this thing where you kind of stick your head in the fabric, and you’re kind of making this V that’s so beautiful, and I think it’s really making a kind of a sculpture in that moment.
Kiani: Yeah, definitely. There’s this idea of a constantly molding sculpture that’s shifting and changing and transforming. And in this, it’s kind of like a metamorphosis, like going through stages of metamorphosis in an ecosystem that’s completely broken, you know? So there’s a lot of that, of, like, how can a body or a soul evolve in an environment that cannot sustain her?
Sam: I’m curious about how you work in so many different areas of dance, within, let’s say, the art world, within the dance and theater world, and then also in the commercial world. I guess you might not have the ability to do this in the commercial world, but when you have this kind of idea of, like, you wrote the “Mundos Rotos” text, you’re working on it as a solo and as the group, does that kind of spill into commercial work as well, or it has to be kind of separate?
Kiani: It depends on the commissioner, because I’ve been so strict with my own practice. I have my solo practice, I have my ensemble practice, now I have my visual art practice, and all those three kind of interact. Even with the commercial work I feel like I’m making art no matter where I am. If I’m in the Super Bowl, I still consider that art. I do feel like there’s a client, and there’s some deliverables that the client needs, and I still feel that of the choreographers of my generation, I’m quite pushy with having my own voice, even if the work is commercial.
But when it comes to concepts that are weaving my solo work into my ensemble work, I try to keep them in those two words, because they’re so mine that I feel like a client will be too privileged to get my stuff, like things of my authorship in that way. Unless jobs like the Super Bowl job that came in. The song that was given to me was a very political song, talking about a reality that’s happening to Puerto Ricans, so there was a bit of a social context in it, that inevitably, I was really trying to go all the way into what I want to say, and all my stunt work, independent stunt work came into it. But, most of the time, I try to have as much voice as possible in commercial work.
Sam: We spoke a little bit during the dress rehearsal that it was the anniversary of a historic event in Puerto Rico, and that some of the music was affected by that – can we chat more about this?
Kiani: Yes. March 21st is the anniversary of the massacre of Ponce. There was a nationalist demonstration, where a lot of people from the island were protesting against the American government, and the colonial status that Puerto Rico was subjected to at the time–that we’re still dragging till today. The police killed most of the people in the demonstration, so it was very traumatic, because there was no real moment before where government people would kill civilians in that way. It was very drastic…
Sam: So it was a real shift in how public dissent was unfolding in Puerto Rico?
Kiani: Yes. And after that, there was another massacre, the massacre of Rio Piedras, so it was a triggering point showing that if you want a deliberation of Puerto Rico, you might get killed. But also, it was a triggering point to kind of stop the growth of this movement. So I thought it was very crazy, I didn’t realize, I know you gave me the date of performance a long time ago, but then, a few weeks before, I was like, oh my god, I’m performing the day of the anniversary of the massacre of Ponce, and I told Kelman and, you know, Kelman, he loves this type of history, and it really informs his work.
So, it became very clear that I wanted to add some speeches from Pedro Albizu Campos. The speeches in the first act are speeches of Pedro Albizu Campos and Malcolm X, so we took some voices from two very important speeches in the Civil Rights Movement, both in the United States and in Puerto Rico.
And then in that last act, there was a voice that comes back again and that’s the voice of “Pepe” Mujica [José Mujica], who died recently, but he was president of Uruguay and one of the few last presidents to actually want the best for the country, and do it the right way. He also became a mentor and, to be honest, an outlet for a lot of people that just wanted to, you know, to live in a fair government. “Pepe” Mujica brought completely sustainable electricity to Uruguay for example. It was someone that really kind of fixed the country from the ground up, you know? So I wanted to include some of his speech that just mainly talks about humanity, doesn’t talk about anything political about Uruguay. It was something that he said about how he would like to be the only soldier he would like to be, or to become a soldier for the rights of humanity. And that’s how I closed the last act, in the hopes that we can all…
I know it’s heavy, because I talk about people, and most people of our generation don’t really want to talk about politics, and to me, it’s like, beyond politics, it’s like, how can we just be supporters of each other, and how can we just be walking the right path. Even if you hate politics, you need to try to have your heart on your sleeve to understand that we could make a difference if we all stick together and we try to become a little bit more fair with each other. At the end, that’s what mundos rotos is a little bit about, realizing that we’re not looking each other eye to eye. People are on different levels, and it’s kind of an urgent call for seeing each other eye to eye, beyond politics. I think that’s what is my main concern, or in synopsis.
