Merli V. Guerra

Merli V. Guerra, MFA in Dance, is Assistant Professor of Dance Technology at Texas A&M University, and an award-winning choreographer and interdisciplinary artist with a focus on dance, technology, and history. Guerra co-founded and directed Luminarium Dance Company (2010-2024), an award-winning 501(c)(3) nonprofit merging dance and illumination in Boston, MA, and Princeton, NJ. Her PLACE Project (Presenting Landmarks through Artistic Community Engagement) integrates history, dance, and technology to celebrate cultural and historic landmarks (founded 2012). Guerra has performed lead roles as a modern dancer and classical Odissi Indian dancer with acclaimed companies on tours to India (2007, 2012) and Japan (2009). Her artistic works have been presented by 100+ events across the U.S., and internationally in North and South America, Asia, and Europe, with interactive public art installations permanently on view in the U.S. and Portugal. Guerra is a 2022 recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship Award from New Jersey State Council on the Arts and Mid Atlantic Arts for her work in screendance, and a 2015 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s prestigious Gold Star Award for her site-specific productions and community engagement. She regularly presents her work with merging dance and extended reality technologies, most recently at the Meeting of European Theatre Academies Conference (Italy, 2023), the Northeast & Mid-Atlantic Creative Placemaking Leadership Summit (New York, 2022), and the Women in Dance Leadership Conference (Chicago, 2022), where she led the conference’s Dance & Technology Panel.

• Choreography
• Screendance, Dance-on-Camera, Dance Film
• Dance and Technology (video projection; interactive lighting and media; virtual, augmented, extended reality choreography/performance)
• History (Guerra’s “PLACE Project”: Presenting Landmarks through Artistic Community Engagement)
• Public Art, Community Engagement, Creative Placemaking
• Palimpsest of Self: Revealing Past and Present Identities through Choreographic and Extended Reality Tools