Rosana Barragan is a dance educator and performing artist. She has taught children for over 20 years, and is deeply passionate about researching movement in infants and children. Rosana owns Calliope Dance Studio for children in San Francisco.

 

She is also a professor of dance at Saint Mary's College of California where she teaches undergraduate and MFA students. In 2014 she founded the College's MFA in Dance program and serves as the Director of the Dance: Creative Practice program.

 

Originally from Colombia, Rosana earned a Bachelor’s degree in Communication and Social Studies from Universidad Javeriana in Bogota; and a Master’s degree in Dance from the Laban Centre, City University in London. She has worked as a professor of dance at Universidad Javeriana and Academia Superior de Artes de Bogota in her native Colombia, and since 2008 at Saint Mary’s College of California. She has worked as a teacher, guest artist and dancer with the Latin Ballet of Virginia since 1998. Rosana has been involved with dance since birth, inheriting the art form from her mother.

 

“I have danced all my life; I don’t even have memories of not having dance as part of my life," she says. "I grew up in my mother’s dance studio, which she had for over 30 years in South America; a big house in a hot tropical city in Colombia, where I spent my childhood years surrounded by many happy children dancing. I went to the state ballet conservatory for 10 years and then moved into the academic world of dance.”

 

Rosana’s technique evolves from her life experience in movement, combining her European training in contemporary dance with her early training in classical ballet, her Latin American roots, Yoga and a strong influence from the world of Somatics, including Bartenieff, Body Mind Centering, Laban Movement Analysis and the Alexander Technique.

 

Rosana also conducts research on movement and has been published in dance and perfoming arts journals, and she has presented at conferences on dance and dance education. Her work draws on her studies in movement modalities including yoga and contemporary dance. In addition, she has developed her own research on the implications of different somatic movement systems, drawing on her studies of Body Mind Centering, Bartenieff Fundamentals, Laban Movement Analysis in Dance Education, and children’s development.

 

As a choreographer, Rosana questions and explores new approaches to the body in art practice and creates challenges for her work to be defined outside the realm of dance. Her artistic work focuses on social and political issues and her aesthetic concerns move her to build special sites and create different audience perspectives.

 

Her award-winning works have been performed on sites including the Thames River beaches in London, parks, plazas, churches, roofs, glass cubes and art galleries. She has received grants for choreography from the Government of Colombia and Mexico, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts in the United States. In 2006 Rosana obtained the First National Dance Research Award given by the Colombian Ministry of Culture. Rosana has published in Performing Arts Journals and has been featured in dance publications in Colombia. Her artistic work has been shown in Central America, South America, Europe and the United States.