Move on up

“My mom says I was choreographing at three years old,” says Houston native Michelle Manzanales, whose first work on a major dance company premieres Thursday 3. Her Sugar in the Raw (Azucar Cruda) is part of Viajes, Luna Negra Dance Theater’s spring offering at the Athenaeum.

“I’ve always loved dancing and making movement,” Manzanales says. The 32-year-old started dancing with Chicago-based Luna as an apprentice in 2003, sowing the seeds that are now blooming into a major career as a choreographer. “When I first came to the company, I talked with Eduardo [Vilaro, Luna’s artistic director and company founder] about how I liked to choreograph,” she says. She quickly worked to become a full-fledged company member, creating many roles in Luna’s growing, groundbreaking repertoire of original works that express the multilayered experience of Latino culture. Then, in late ’05, “I was going through major changes in my personal life,” says Manzanales. “I felt my body needed a rest.”

Simultaneously, Vilaro was then feeling the need for a rehearsal director—someone to assist him with the duties of maintaining the dances in their proper form. Luna dances works by Vilaro, but also by other choreographers who are part of a more far-flung family, including Ron DeJesus,  Miguel Mancillas, Vicente Nebrada, Gustavo Ramirez Sansano, Pedro Ruiz, Nancy Turano and Septime Webre. The job of keeping all these artists’ works in tip-top shape is a big one, and it takes someone both discerning and diplomatic.

Manzanales credits her good people skills for landing her the rehearsal director position: “I get along with everyone. I can weave myself into different groups, and I’m good at bringing people together,” she says. “I’m very familiar with the repertory, and I think Eduardo saw that [as a dancer] I always tried to stay true to the choreographer’s intention.”

Although she’s been deeply immersed in realizing other choreographer’s works, Manzanales has plenty of her own creative mojo. She diligently feeds her creativity and choreographic chops, mostly by attending workshops and seminars with D.C.–based choreographer Liz Lerman, whom she sees as a mentor. The two met in 1998, when Manzanales was a student at the University of Houston. Her work-in-progress was the test subject for a lesson on Lerman’s respected Critical Response Process—a tool that helps artists refine their creations through formalized communication with audiences. “I really look up to her,” Manzanales says of Lerman. “I love her skills at community building and outreach using dance. A couple times I’ve been lucky enough to get a scholarship [to one of Lerman’s Dance Exchange Institutes], but mostly I just make it happen,” she says. “It’s hard to take time to nurture yourself, but I think it’s really important.”

Manzanales is also inspired by Celeste Miller, an artistic associate of Lerman’s who uses writing and storytelling as tools for her choreographic process. “When I use text as source material for choreography, it comes from something personal. It’s not contrived out of nowhere,” she says.

The choreography for Sugar in the Raw is inspired by personal stories: “I interviewed the dancers about their struggles,” says Manzanales. Armed with audio recordings from these interviews, Manzanales worked alone in the studio creating movement material inspired by individual words, sounds, and images in the dancer’s stories. Then she rejoined the dancers, to weave the material into “a collage of honest human experiences.” Manzanales says, “I like to balance technical dance with purpose, feeling and meaning.”

Luna Negra is at the Athenaeum through Sunday 6.