Angela Marina Arriaga

Hometown: San Diego, CA 
Degree: B.A. English and Psychology, San Diego State University 

Angela is a multi-media movement and performance artist with training in ballet, jazz, modern and aerial arts. She drifted from a movement practice during her undergraduate degree, during which her studies focused on queer theory and feminist and gender studies. 

After completing her B.A., Angela relocated to Chicago to enter the professional world, but ultimately found her way back to dance. While in Chicago, she trained on scholarship at Joel Hall Dancers and Center and Chicago Movement Collective, and was mentored in somatics and Feldenkrais Method under Mary Szedga and Elizabeth Espinola.  

MFAEIP Research

Angela will research the politics of the othered body and experiences of embodiment in queer identities and sex workers. I am also interested in exploring the body as an archive that holds cultural and ancestral memory and stores records of pain, injury, and trauma.  

Angela plans to continue to engage with movement, understanding the body container for learning and site of knowledge through teaching and choreography. She is considering pursuing a Ph.D. in Performance Studies, depending on the path that her work takes her. 

Why Duke University? 

“I chose the MFAEIP program for its interdisciplinary nature and conviction to understanding dance as a research methodology that can expand beyond the discipline. The program provides space to explore how we can bring embodiment into the texts we read, the data we analyze and the words we speak, and to learn through a kaleidoscope of strategies such as reading, writing, moving, listening and resting.”