Nude Character Shoe 

Biography

​

Andrea Muñiz (they/she) is a non-binary Puertorican movement artist. They approach their creative work with curiosity and care. As a performer, improviser, bodyworker, and choreographer they center the body as the source of information and investigation. Andrea recently relocated to Montreal.

 

Andrea’s choreography engages in world-building and shapeshifting. Their work is often described as raw, fresh, and expressive, inviting audiences to witness vulnerability and transformation. Andrea is currently developing NATURE I AM, a dance film trilogy inspired by the discovery that some trees “hold their breath” when there is smoke from wildfires. It follows two trees as they navigate their relationships to themselves, each other, and their environment. What do they do when their world is up in flames? How do they support each other? This project is made in collaboration with the performing artists, Maude Warshaw and Ana Delgado, and videographer, Kathy Harnish, and with support from the Midday Movement Series “Rough Drafts” program and funding from the Next Steps for Boston Dance grant.

 

As a performer, Andrea is known for their captivating presence and dynamic expressive range. They approach performing as a process of augmented authenticity. As a professional performer, they have had the honor of interpreting the works of Amelia Estrada, Juliet Paramor, Jessi Stegall, and more. Most recently, Andrea is on tour with Laila Franklin’s BABYBABYBABY, which premiered at the 2025 Philly Fringe Fest. Andrea is an alumna of Andanza Escuela de Danza Contemporánea and a founding member of El Taller Juvenil de Andanza. They hold a B.F.A. in Contemporary Dance Performance from The Boston Conservatory.  

 

Andrea is a committed practitioner of contact improvisation. They value the practice for its attunement to agency inside of a collective experience. As a practitioner and facilitator, they are investigating athleticism and endurance, technique as a tool for efficiency and physical safety, and emergent composition. Andrea is also a massage therapist and has defined their perspectives on anatomy and musculoskeletal efficiency from a healing perspective, which complements their investigations of the body as a site of inquiry through dance. 

​

​​​​​​

Work Description 

 

Nude Character Shoe is a distortion of pleasure and performance transfigured into a dance that actively asks you to objectify it. Influenced by the absurdist and liberatory nature of drag, choreographer/performer, Andrea Muñiz reflected on what “performing woman” used to mean for them. Their feminized upbringing impacted their early adult life and instilled in them an insatiable and destructive need to be desired sexually. The work uses images of hypersexualized women in pop culture and draws on the lived experience of being a performer and being objectified on and off the stage. Nude Character Shoe interrogates how gendered expectations are constructed, consumed, and internalized as a performer and spectator.  

 

Andrea began the work after finishing their run as a dancer in the production of Ryan Landry and The Gold Dust Orphan’s Rosemary’s Baby Jesus, a Christmas themed drag parody of the 60’s cult classic horror movie Rosemary’s Baby. An earlier version of the work was presented at NACHMO Boston in March of this year.

 

Images taken tonight can be shared with Andrea through Instagram @_andreamuniz_ or email andreamuniz.move@gmail.com  

​​​​