About
Awards & Recognitions
Biography
Yvonne Montoya is a mother, dancemaker, bi-national artist, thought leader, writer, speaker, and the founding director of Safos Dance Theatre. Based in Tucson, AZ and originally from Albuquerque, NM, her work is grounded in and inspired by the landscapes, languages, cultures, and aesthetics of the U.S. Southwest.
Montoya is a process-based dancemaker who creates low-tech, site-specific and site-adaptive pieces for nontraditional dance spaces. Though most well-known in the U.S. Southwest, her choreography has been staged across the United States and in Guatemala, and her dance films screened, at Queens University of Charlotte, NC and the University of Exeter (in the U.K.). In addition to being the founding director, Montoya is the lead choreographer for Safos Dance Theatre. Under her direction, the company won the Tucson Pima Arts Council’s Lumie Award for Emerging Organization (2015). She is currently working on Stories from Home, a series of dances based on her family’s oral histories.
From 2017-2018 Montoya was a Post-Graduate Fellow in Dance at Arizona State University, where she founded and organized the inaugural Dance in the Desert: A Gathering of Latinx Dancemakers. From 2019-2020, Montoya was a Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow, and a member of the 2019-2020 Dance/USA Fellowships to Artists pilot program. She is currently a 2021-2022 Southwest Folk Alliance Plain View Fellow. Montoya was a recipient of the 2019 National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC) POD grant, the 2020 MAP Fund Award, and the first Arizona-based artist to receive the 2020 New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) National Dance Project Production Grant. Montoya won the Arizona Creative Excellence Award at the 2021 Arizona Drive-In Dance Film Festival. In 2022, her company Safos Dance Theatre received the National Performance Network Creation Fund Grant and the National Endowment for the Arts Grants for Arts Project Grant for her piece Stories from Home. Yvonne was also recently featured in KQED’s If Cities Could Dance.
National Endowment for the Arts Grant for Arts Project
Awarded to Safos Dance Theatre on behalf of Yvonne Montoya
2022
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National Performance Network Creation Fund Grant
Awarded to Safos Dance Theatre on behalf of Yvonne Montoya
2022
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Arizona Creative Excellence Award
Arizona Drive-In Dance Film Festival
2021
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PlainView Fellow
Southwest Folk Alliance
2021
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Visiting Artist
Projecting All Voices
Arizona State University
Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
2021
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National Dance Project Production Grant
Awardee
2020
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The MAP Fund
Awardee
2020
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Nominee: Arizona Governor's Arts Awards
Individual Artist Category
2019
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National Association for Latino Arts and Cultures POD Grant
Awardee
2019
Who's Next: Art list
Recognized as one of 24 up an coming artists in Arizona by The Arizona Republic & azcentral
2018
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Best Art Film
"Reflections"
3 Minute Film Fest
Tucson Fringe Festival
2017
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Lumie: Emerging Arts Organization
Safos Dance Theatre
Tucson Pima Arts Council
2015
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With her dance company Safos Dance Theatre, Yvonne was an artist in residence in Taos, New Mexico in Spring 2024. Hosted by Taos Center for the Arts and Wildflower Theater, Montoya worked with community members and Taos High School students sharing workshops in dance, movement, storytelling, and poetry. While in residency, she worked with the Taos community to co-devise a dance inspired by Taos Stories from Home.
In 2019, Yvonne Montoya was a Makers Space Experience Artist in Residence at Keshet Dance and Center for the Arts in Albuquerque. During the week-long residency, Montoya worked with dancers, conducted preliminary research and the folk dances of New Mexico, and wrote a research paper The Traditional and the Contemporary: Embodied Research on the Folk Dances of Northern New Mexico.
In the Community
Yvonne Montoya is the founder of Dance in the Desert a project that supports Arizona-based dance artists and performers by incubating new works, providing professional development, and introducing their work to new audiences.
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Yvonne Montoya is a founding member of Las Fronterizas ensemble. Las Fronterizas is a group of mujeres artistas that combines dance, theater, and visual arts to dissolve literal and figurative borders.
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Photo By Baylie MacRae
Residencies
Guest Artist
In Fall 2024, Yvonne was invited by Colorado College to guest teach a convergence course combining Dr. Sriram’s “Philosophies of the Body: Bodies and Power” with Dr. Roybal’s “Art, Power, & Resistance.” She also gave a choreographer’s talk about Participatory Action Research Methodologies in choreography and dance during a student luncheon.
Fall 2024, while on tour with her company Safos Dance Theatre, Yvonne was a guest artist at Southern Utah University where she taught master classes to Dance Major and Minor students as well as General Education and Dance Appreciation students.
Órale! In 2023, Yvonne was one of six Latino choreographers invited by San Francisco-based David Herrera Performance Company to create three new dances for the show Órale! Órale! premiered September 7-9 at Z Space in San Francisco. Yvonne created three dances inspired by and set to the music of El Vez.
This project builds and creates community between U.S.-based dance artists and dance artists from Latin America. The ensemble was founded in 2018 and has produced various community based performances including “Mis amores fronterizos,” in 2022.
In 2023 she was commissioned as a collaborator on Dr. Jacqueline Barrio's "The Book of the City: Exhibiting a Southwestern Urban Humanities" Project. The exhibition will take place October 25th at 6pm at the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Tucson.
Under the umbrella of Safos Dance Theatre, Montoya directed the following arts education residencies for youth and seniors in under served communities such as the City of South Tucson, west Tucson, and on the Pascua Yaqui reservation.​
Dance in the Barrio: Storytelling and Art, a performing arts program for senior citizens in the City of South Tucson. 2014-2015. ​
Color the Mural: Arts Education Residency, a week-long mural art residency program in the City of South Tucson. Summer 2014.​
Youth in the Barrio: Dance in the Community, two dance theatre and alcohol prevention residencies in the City of South Tucson and Ochoa Elementary School.
Summer and Fall 2013.​Performance Poetry en Vivo: From Page to Stage and Beyond, a poetry dance theater residency at Pistor Middle School and Hiaki High School on the Pascua Yaqui Reservation.
Research
She is an independent writer and researcher and recently self published her first book “Reflections: Writings from the Motherhood and Performing Arts Project.”
In 2024 she was invited to speak at the International Parenting and Dance Seminar 3 in at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. There she presented a talk “Pivots and Pianos: Choreographing through the COVID-19 Pandemic with a 5th Grader” based on the chapter she wrote for the book Pandemic Motherhood: Exploring the COVID-19 Pandemic through Engaged and Applied Arts edited by Ali Duffy.
Yvonne worked as Adjunct Faculty at the University of Arizona’s Department of Mexican American Studies (MAS) from 2006-2012 where she taught classes and oversaw student research on Latinx representations. ​
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She is as an independent writer and researcher.
RESEARCH PAPERS
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Yvonne presented the following papers at various academic conferences.
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Stories from Home: Siglos. Sueños. Sefarad. presented at the Western Jewish Studies Association Conference in Las Vegas (digitally) in 2021.
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The Traditional and the Contemporary: Embodied Research on the Folk Dances of Northern New Mexico presented at the Indígenas, africanos, roma y europeos. Ritmos transatlánticos en música, canto y baile Conference in Veracruz, México in 2019.
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The performative academic paper Who Takes Center Stage?: Xicana Epistemologies in Contemporary Dance at El Mundo Zurdo conference in San Antonio, TX in 2018.
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Additionally, Yvonne facilitated both qualitative (focus groups) and quantitative (pre and post surveys) research conducted at the inaugural Dance in the Desert at 2018.
She was also invited to speak as a Movement Research Studies Project Participant on the panel An Ethics of (Talking About) Watching in NYC.
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Yvonne Montoya is an original member of the Decolonial Epistemologies Dance Lab organized by Fabiola Torralba.
Collaborators
Yvonne was a member of the 2024 Noche de Baile collective that produced six Latino dance companies during an independent showcase at WAA in San Diego.
​Yvonne has collaborated with the following artists and organizations: Las Fronterizas Ensemble, the Binational Arts Residency (BNAR), Dance in the Desert, Thom Lewis, Bobby LeFebre, Armando Castellano, Quinteto Latino, the Latina Dance Theatre Project, Borderlands Theater, Raices Taller 222 Art Gallery, the Esperanza Dance Project, Dia V Tucson, the John Valenzuela Youth Center, Mission View Elementary School, the House Neighborly Service, and Musical Mayhem Theater.