APAP Showcase / BOCA TUYA (Omar Román De Jesús ) and Rachna Nivas - The 92nd Street Y, New York
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92NY Center for Culture & Arts

APAP Showcase

BOCA TUYA (Omar Román De Jesús ) and Rachna Nivas
BOCA TUYA and Rachna Nivas

BOCA TUYA is a New York-based contemporary art incubator led by Princess Grace & Harkness Awardee, Queer Puertorriqueño artistic director and choreographer, Omar Román de Jesús.

Known for its vibrant, rhythmic works and surrealist storytelling, BOCA TUYA creates bold, immersive performances that push artistic boundaries and invite collaboration across artistic genres.

BOCA TUYA presents its vibrant 2024-2025 repertory, featuring live performances of two captivating works. The company’s signature work, Los Perros del Barrio Colosal, is a high-energy adventure featuring eight dancers. The critically acclaimed duet Like those playground kids at midnight is “a crowd favorite,” (Fjord Review, Nov 2024), “…full of sensual vulnerability, the effect is hypnotic.”

Additionally, the presentation will feature a brief video showcasing excerpts of Omar Román de Jesús latest premiere, Caress them in a way that hurts a little and Sombreristas — offering a sneak peek at BOCA TUYA’s stunning visual storytelling, with fully produced technical elements as seen in a theater setting.

Join us to experience the innovation, rhythm, and heart of BOCA TUYA’s work—perfect for audiences seeking bold, original, and thought-provoking performances.
Presentation Program: www.bocatuya.com/apap

Come experience excerpts of internationally renowned kathak artist, Rachna Nivas’ latest work, Reclaiming the Divine Feminine (now available for touring). Nivas takes audiences into the dark and mystical realm of Tantra, hailing supreme feminine power as the primordial energy of the universe. Through electrifying North Indian classical dance and live music, Nivas embodies the ferocity of Kali, Goddess of time and death, personifying the bold paradoxes of “untamed” feminine wholeness.

Dispelling western myths of Tantra and elevating ecofeminism, interconnectedness, and Eastern principles of non-duality, Reclaiming the Divine Feminine promises to haunt, provoke, and enchant while illuminating a woman’s treacherous path to reclaiming her wild limitless nature.

This presentation will feature live musical artists Shakir Khan (Sitar), Asif Khan (Vocals and Harmonium), Karamat Khan (Tabla), Neeharika Tummala (Vocals), and a Musical Score composed by Jayanta Banerjee.

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This program is part of the Harkness Dance Center, which recognizes the ongoing generosity of the Harkness Foundation for Dance.
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Omar Román De Jesús

Omar Román De Jesús

Omar Román De Jesús (Bayamón, Puerto Rico) is a queer Puertorriqueño choreographer and the director of the NYC-based dance …
Omar Román De Jesús

Omar Román De Jesús

Omar Román De Jesús (Bayamón, Puerto Rico) is a queer Puertorriqueño choreographer and the director of the NYC-based dance company Boca Tuya. Currently, he is a proud Artist in Residence at 92NY. Omar is the inaugural Baryshnikov Arts Center Fellow at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park and a 2023 Dance Magazine Harkness Promise Awardee. His accolades include the 2022 Princess Grace Award in Choreography, the 2022 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Choreography, the 2022 Palm Desert Choreography Festival Grand Prize, and the 2020 Ann & Weston Hicks Choreography Fellowship at Jacob’s Pillow.

He has been commissioned to create works for over 20 companies and pre-professional schools, including The Paul Taylor Dance Company, The Juilliard School, Ballet Hispánico, BalletCollective, Limón 2, SALT Dance, St. Louis Dance Theater, MOVE NYC, Bruce Wood Dance, Joffrey Ballet Concert Group, Whim W’Him, Parsons Dance, The Ailey School, Kennesaw State University, James Madison University, and Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.

Omar’s works for stage and screen have been presented worldwide, receiving top recognitions through the Joffrey Academy of Dance’s Winning Works Choreographic Competition, Whim W’Him’s Choreographic Shindig, The Dance Gallery Festival, Reverb Dance Festival, and the International Dance Festival of Puerto Rico, where he was awarded the Ambassador of Dance medal. His screendance, Los Perros del Barrio Colosal, has been viewed by audiences in over 20 countries and was awarded Best of Screen Dance International as well as Best Choreography and Best Narrative at the ReThink Dance Film Festival. Over the past five years, he has toured internationally to Colombia, Panama, and the Canary Islands, and has presented work domestically in New York, Georgia, Washington, Pennsylvania, and California. In 2023, his piece Papagayos, commissioned for Ballet Hispánico, premiered at New York City Center and traveled to North Carolina for the American Dance Festival. Most recently, Like Those Playground Kids at Midnight was presented in celebration of the 92NY 150th anniversary.

Omar is fond of education and has experience teaching workshops and master classes all over the world for professional dancers, students with special needs, people with physical disabilities, and marginalized communities.

Rachna Nivas

Rachna Nivas

Rachna Nivas (pronounced RUHTCH-NAA NIH-VAAS) is a performing artist, choreographer, educator, community organizer, and activist …
Rachna Nivas

Rachna Nivas

Rachna Nivas (pronounced RUHTCH-NAA NIH-VAAS) is a performing artist, choreographer, educator, community organizer, and activist of Indian classical art with a mission to uphold the authenticity of her artistic heritage while thoughtfully advancing its modernity. She is one of the most accomplished kathak dance practitioners of her generation, called by critics “revelatory” and “charismatic” who “radiates power and grace”. Her work is rooted in elevating feminine consciousness and Eastern philosophies that challenge Eurocentric cultural paradigms. Having risen to principal dancer in legendary master Pandit Chitresh Das’ acclaimed company for 17 years, Rachna is a senior torchbearer of a significant lineage of kathak dance. Today she is growing her solo body of work in a generative chapter of her artistic journey. She is also Co-Artistic Director of Leela Dance Collective and directs Leela’s New York City kathak training center.

Rachna was awarded the prestigious Dance Research Fellowship of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in 2023 and the NYC-based CUNY Dance Initiative Artist Residency in 2024. Her original works include Reclaiming the Divine Feminine, an embodiment of the wild tantric Goddess Kali, personifying the uncontainable power and paradoxes of feminine wholeness; Unedited, a risk-bound tour-de-force solo highlighting improvisation with live musicians; SPEAK, a cross-genre collaboration bringing together kathak and tap, bridging Indian and African-American artistic heritage, co-created with Rukhmani Mehta, Dormeshia, and Michelle Dorrance; Son of the Wind, a large-scale dance drama on the great epic Ramayana; Meera, the story of a medieval Hindu princess who liberates herself from patriarchy through poetry, song, and dance.

Notable presentations of Rachna’s works include LA’s Broad Stage & Ford Theaters, San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Wolf Trap Performing Arts Center, Green Music Center, Kimmel Center, Maui Arts and Cultural Center, Mumbai’s Royal Opera House, New Delhi’s Epicenter. Her works have been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, California Arts Council, Zellerbach Family Foundation, and Alliance for California Traditional Arts.

As an educator and community organizer, Rachna has trained and mentored hundreds of students of all backgrounds on both the West and East Coasts with a vision to foster the next generation’s lineage-bearers. She is also passionate in engendering a larger sense of pride and reclaiming of Indian artistic tradition amongst the South Asian community. In addition to directing Leela New York’s training center, Rachna has taught in numerous educational residencies, most notably at Verdon/Fosse Legacy Summer Training Program, New York’s Kuperberg Center for the Arts Mosaic Program, New Orleans’ Treme Center, Miami’s Conservatory of Arts, Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and many more.

Please note that all 92Y regularly scheduled in-person programs are suspended.