Performer · Artist · Educator
Associate Professor of Dance at Oberlin College & Conservatory and multidisciplinary artist.
Al Evangelista is an Associate Professor of Dance at Oberlin College & Conservatory and a multidisciplinary artist whose creative process engages with social justice and performance studies. His research identifies ways in which theatre and dance provoke and create change. At Oberlin, he has a courtesy appointment in the Department of Comparative American Studies.
Al choreographed works at Movement Research at the Judson Church, Northwestern University, slippage lab, Steppenwolf Garage, Links Hall, American Theatre Company, Chicago’s Night Out in the Parks, the University of Chicago, Moss Arts Center, Virginia Tech, the University of Michigan Museum of Modern Art, and Hill Auditorium.
Al also acted and performed at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Adventure Stage Chicago, Haven Theatre Company, Chicago Opera Theatre, and Moss Arts Center, and danced in works for Dance Exchange, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, The Inconvenience, and Links Hall, among others.
Al trained with the Steppenwolf West program and American Conservatory Theater, and is a graduate of UC San Diego and the University of Michigan. He is a Certified Practitioner of Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process®.
Al teaches dance and performance at Oberlin College & Conservatory, and facilitates Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process® as a certified practitioner.
Artist in Residence
Showing
Daring Dances / National Center for Choreography
Choreographer and Performer
Artistic Director
Podcast Interview
An evening-length dance performance attempting to mediate the lost histories of both queer and Filipino-American identities through movement. Working with our histories allows a more informed present and resilient future. How do we move forward if histories have been lost or silenced?
The Loneliness Project uses verbatim testimony to document the rich history of Chicago’s LGBTQIA+ activist communities and to make sense of their fracturing over the past 20 years. The Loneliness Project employs the documentary method as not only a mode of artistic creation and preservation but also as a mode of collaborative problem solving.
A solo dance performed with a violinist. Red responds to the works of The Ernst Pulgram and Frances McSparran Collection at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. Using the exhibition as primary source material, the movement interprets the emotion, line, and color of works by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Ernst Kirchner and Oskar Kokoschka.
A multidisciplinary performance involving both a lecture-presentation and dance to explore research on Coastal Erosion and the Human Adaptive Response. Displacement uses data by Tom Crawford and his lab in order to present the effects of shoreline retreat in Bangladesh.
A movement score to celebrate the first day of Asian and Pacific Island Heritage Month 2021 and the Oberlin College Dance Department’s Day of Dance. This framework builds on “tatlong bagsak” a physical practice used by Filipinx and Filipinx-American community organizers to embody, celebrate, and recognize the complexity of labor and solidarity.
A seven-movement dance cantata choreographed by Al Evangelista and composed by Douglas Hertz. Choreographed for five dancers and scored for eight voices with string quartet, Saeculum explores the ever-shifting relationships between members of American society in both the physical and sonic dimensions.
The Lorain County Arts + Culture Collective is comprised of organizations and institutions united around the benefits of arts and culture to the health of our community as well as the value of the creative industries to our local economy.
For performance, choreography, teaching, or Critical Response Process® facilitation — I’d love to hear from you.