Ea Torrado
Torrado's works have been supported by The National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Meeting, Asia Pacific Improv Festival and Southeast Asia Choreolab, The National Commision for Culture and the Arts, Japan Foundation, Pineapple Lab, CCP’s Neo Filipino, WIFI Body Festival, Steps Dance Project, Contemporary Dance Network Manila and Searchmindscape Foundation.
Ea Torrado (1985, Quezon City) is a queer-identifying, La Union-based Filipina contemporary choreographer, performing artist and educator. Her creations manifest in performance rituals, immersive theatre and movement gatherings, site-specific work, film, installation, improvisational performance and dance theatre pieces.
As the founder and artistic director of Daloy Dance Company since 2014, for her, Daloy is not just a platform for her works; it's a liquid space where rich, messy, promiscuous, generative, and hard-to-classify dances can come to life.
From 2020 pandemic onwards, Torrado has expanded her repertoire to include a series of movement and meditation gatherings that delve into the concept of the ‘divine feminine’. These gatherings include “Ritwal", “When She Comes - Emergence of the Goddess Within Through Dance and Song”, "Ligaya - A Workshop on Gaze and Orgasms”, "Awakening the Inner Dyosa”, and “Dancing Dyosa Circle”. Additionally, she is also a tarot reader, energy healer, and mindfulness meditation facilitator — qualities of intuition, healing, and care that are deeply ingrained in her practice, reflecting divine feminine qualities.
Furthermore, she founded and continues to share Daloy Movement as a practice, where she guides others through embodiment exercises that intertwine intuitive and improvisational movement practices for self-understanding, discovery, and deeper connection with others and with nature.
Internationally, she has performed at Ho Chi Minh International Dance Festival, Low Fat Art Fest Thailand, Goyang International Dance Festival, Lively Arts Performing Arts College in Pennsylvania & Cape Fear Community College for the Performing Arts in North Carolina, USA, SensUnique Gallery in Ghent, Belgium for Sorry Not Sorry Festival and participated in Radical Contact, Tanzplatform,Tokyo Performing Arts Meeting, Asia Pacific Improv Festival and Southeast Asia Choreolab, among the few.
She have received support from The National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Meeting, Asia Pacific Improv Festival and Southeast Asia Choreolab, The National Commision for Culture and the Arts, Japan Foundation, Pineapple Lab, CCP’s Neo Filipino, WIFI Body Festival, Steps Dance Project, Contemporary Dance Network Manila and Searchmindscape Foundation.
Awards
01
1st Place at Philippine Dance Cup for her piece 'Flight'
2018
03
Remedios De Oteyza Award for Choreography
2016
05
Alvin Erasga Tolentino Koreograpiya Award
2014
02
Asian Cultural Council Grant
2017
04
3rd Place at Philippine Dance Cup for her piece 'Evaporation'
2016
Works
ItikLandia (2023)
Pag-aatang (2023)
Pamamaalam (2022)
ItikLandia, a contemporary dance theatre, was birthed by the Daloy Dance Company during their residency at the British School Manila in March 2023. Directed by Ea Torrado, this piece is initially inspired by the traditional Filipino folk dance “Itik-itik’, and is a physicalized hymn to the natural world we all share, live and thrive in. Read more
"Pagaatang" is a short film directed by Ea Torrado, which in Tagalog, means "offering" or "sacrifice."
On May 5th, Ea Torrado chose to commemorate her late grandmother's birthday through a ritual led by the ritualist, Malaya Arguelles. This ritual served as an offering to Ea's ancestors and a transformative rite of passage for her. Malaya called upon Ea's spirit guides and her grandmother's guidance to accompany her on her new journey as an artist and healer. The ritual depicted in the film takes place at The Mebuyan Vessel, an awe-inspiring art installation created by Filipino artist Leeroy New. Inspired by the mythology of the Bagobo-Tagabawa people, the installation pays homage to the deity Mebuyan. Read more
Ang kanta na ito ay para kay Nanay Irene Antonia Patolot Ta-asan who transitioned to the non-physical realm today, October 15 2021. Ang title ng kantangsayawritwal na ito ay 'Pamamaalam'. Para din sa lahat ng kailangan nating pakawalan lalo na nitong huling Typhoon Maring.
(This work is made possible through the support from Greenhouse Theatre, Ontario Arts Council and Sha Sambong para sa isang project na ang ngalan ay The Future is Ritual) Watch this work
Bari-bari (2021)
Ea co-directed Bari-bari, a collection of 9 short dance films that combine interviews, folk and ethnic dances in Ilocos Region (and contemporary interpretation of these dances), while donning visual artist, Leeroy New’s costumes made out of recycled plastic bottles. Advocating for environmental sustainability and regeneration, the premiere of this work is on the Environmental Dances website by Company Christoph Winkler (November 2021), and Fifth Wall Fest international dance film festival (October 2021). Bari-bari is is supported by Goethe Instut Manila. Read more
Tethering (2020)
In La Union, Philippines, dance artist Ea Torrado finds herself tethering to a practice of ‘embodies listening’ to the ground, the winds and the sun. Ea roots herself to the sensory experience the natural environment is moving her, as she negotiates being the originator of the movement and being the channel through which movement happens in every prolific, present moment. Read more
Encounters (2019)
Encounters is a performance by Daloy Dance Company and contemporary choreographer Ea Torrado.It developed around Agnes Arellano’s suite of goddess sculptures Dakini, Innana, Kali and Magdalene. The goddesses appear descended in a grove at the Diliman campus, strong verdigris forms amidst lush green growth.
Encounters explores dualities of human existence and is rooted in Ea Torrado’s exploration of dance as emancipatory ritual. Read more
Moonlight (2019)
Howl (2018)
In Moonlight, the corps of dancers undertook the challenge of folding different lexicons of movement together: drawing vocabulary from the club kids, ravers and the voguing ball scene, and weaving it in with systems of motion and symmetry in animal species: flocks of birds, schools of fish, cicada swarms, cats howling at the moon. Led by a steadily thrumming score of trance music, the dancers flow through compounded cycles of choreographed expressions. Read more
Howl’ explores a new movement language of ‘release’ through club techno music. ‘Howl’ is inspired by somatic explorations that transcend the body from restriction and inhibition, to freedom and possibility, ‘Glitters’ explores movement invented out of these ‘liberating’ dance exercises, releasing the dancers’ bodies from rigid holding patterns, and pushing past their exhausting point through repetition and drive. Danced to evocative club techno beats ‘Howl’ ponders on the performance of beauty, gender and vulnerability. Read more
Wailing Women (2017)
This piece is an homage to the grieving Filipina mothers and widows of the 12,000 (and counting) dead and ‘disappeared’ victims of the current Philippine administration’s ‘war on drugs’. Drawing inspiration from her interviews with these widows and mothers and her own intuitive practice of healing through Reiki and Yoga, Wailing Women probes on death, justice and human dignity. It combines storytelling, chanting and naturalistic movements (pulsating, punching, gyrating, shaking, cringing, wringing, releasing, etc.) to give voice and body to the sensations and sense-making of loss.In the middle of an ongoing war, with thousands of bodies killed and many others still missing, Read more
Pieces of Me (2015)
Unearthing (2015)
Dysmorphilia (2014)
Canton (2014)
“Combined with their bold experimental gestures and use of cultural traditions, Daloy Dance Company is an audacious voice slowly navigating the new ground in the current Philippine dance scene.”
–Rina Corpus, Curator Magazine
Drawing inspiration from pre-existing works, Pieces of Me is an experimental dance performance that fuses various movement vocabularies and theatrical devices, while employing Daloy Dance Company’s strongest suit— dance improvisation. Read more
Through intuitive movement investigations into first the sensuous, then the ecstatic, and finally, the mythic; Ea Torrado and Daloy's corps of dancers have assembled a fierce and primal homage to the filipino babaylan (the balance-bringing shaman-priestess) and to the ancient wisdom of the Sacred Feminine. The dance pushes pleasure forward unabashedly, pulling the dancers through a tantric spectrum of frenzied somatic release. Unearthing transforms performance into community ritual, foregrounding the social being as a sacred being. Read more
Dysmorphilia– a love for one’s own deformed body, is coined out of the Greek words ‘Dysmorph’ or ‘misshapen’ and ‘Philia’ or ‘love’. In this digital age where the norm is to represent one’s self through online avatars, Dysmorphilia exposes a hyperbolic and satirical representation of individuals’ own perceptions and imaginations of their bodies. When the media makes a villain out of blemishes on one’s skin, when the press glorifies a certain complexion, when your peers give you a different eye for your oddly placed mole, and when your family demonizes your fats, how do you define yourself? Read more
Canton is a non-linear narrative inspired by the lives of young girls and women struggling as survival sex workers in urban poor relocation sites. The urban sprawl of Manila, Philippines is home to thousands of Filipino families who migrate from the provinces to find work in the congested capital. Many become illegal settlers who are later on moved by the government to relocation sites three to four hours away from work in the city. Read more
Filipinas (2014)
Sisa (2014)
Choreographer and dancer Ea Torrado, one of the three featured artists at Lopez Museum’s upcoming exhibit “Complicated,” presents a three-channel video installation. Her work is based on the frantic search of Jose Rizal’s “Sisa” and reflections on the museum’s iconic “España y Filipinas” painting by Juan Luna.
Using Sisa’s search for her missing children as a metaphor of post-colonial identity, Torrado presents the search for the many desaparecidos and victims of extrajudicial killings in recent history as premised in the promises of modernity and progress which are both at the core of nation-building and Luna’s painting. This film is produced with the support of Tuchi Imperial, sound designer Chris Aronson, cinematographer and film editor Dan Pamintuan and the ABS CBN Film Archives. Read more
Dots (2013)
Nga-nga (2013)
Dots is a dance piece that fuses together elements of contemporary dance, film, and animation into the self-journey of a man who tries to connect the seemingly endless number of dots in his life. The happiness, the pain, and the love of each dot will be made felt by the direction of contemporary dancer-choreographer, Ea Torrado. Dancing in the piece are Erickson Dizon, Jomelle Era and Miki Ochoa from Core Dance Group, Mark Rosaroso from the Chameleon Dance Theater, Riel Bulos from Airdance, and independent contemporary dancers, Sabrina Gacad, Ryan Salas, Mervin Manuel, and Bill Barrinuevo. Original music is composed by theater artist, Christopher Aronson. Read more
Photo Credits: Meinard Navato, Tuchi Imperial, Kitty Bunag, Erickson Dela Cruz and Chino Neri