Ivan Espinosa is a Latino theater artist and performer originally from the urban metropolis of Houston, Texas. Upon moving to Olympia, Washington in 2015, Ivan soon became enchanted with the rich biodiversity and awe-inspiring interconnectedness of the Pacific Northwest. He began to actively and creatively explore the body’s inherent capacity to resonate with animate landscapes of the Earth and the potential of performance art to further facilitate this rich, visceral interplay.

As a director and choreographer of stage performance, Ivan has produced dozens of original works, including multiple performances at the Seattle International Butoh Festival and the Houston Fringe Festival. As an independent artist, he's been awarded grants from the Houston Arts Alliance and The Evergreen State College to fund various projects. Ivan's stage choreography and aesthetics are influenced and informed by his intensive studies and longtime practice of Butoh, an avant-garde and surreal performance art form which originated in post-war Japan in the 1950’s.

Ivan lives and works in Midtown Manhattan and welcomes all kinds of creative collaboration from a wide variety of artists, musicians, performers, writers, and fellow Performance Studies cohorts!

Why PS @ NYU?

Ivan is interested in researching and creating new types of innovative, eco-centric theater performances in which the intelligence of the Earth is manifested on stage. If the Earth is indeed a living, breathing being with its own unique type of consciousness....how can this be captured and experienced in performance? Ivan hopes to collaborate with a wide team of dynamic, creative thinkers to create a show in which the Earth takes center stage and goes from being passive scenery, to the star of the show!