For you, to mentor me

MERLI V. GUERRA is an award-winning filmmaker, choreographer, and interdisciplinary artist. She is a professional dancer with a background in ballet, modern, and classical Odissi Indian dance, and Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Luminarium Dance Company—an award-winning contemporary dance company based in Boston, MA, that is regularly hailed for its unique combination of dance and light. Guerra has performed lead roles with notable Odissi and modern dance companies on international tours to India (2007, 2012) and Japan (2009), while her choreographic works, dance-on-camera films, and interactive art installations have been presented by more than 80 events across the country (in California, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont), and abroad in Canada, Germany, and Italy. Mostly recently, her screendance film ‘Synchronic’ was selected for screening at Festival Cinematica: Immagine in Movimento in Acona, Italy, as one of 14 finalists for the festival’s cinematic awards; while here in the states, her screendance films ‘The One I Keep’ and ‘What seems so is transition’ have been selected for presentation at the 2019 Women in Dance Leadership Conference, where Guerra will join a panel of international filmmakers this October in Philadelphia.

Guerra's work extends beyond the traditional stage; her site-specific Night at the Tower project was honored as one of just three projects (out of 5,000+ across the state in 2014) to receive the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s prestigious 2015 Gold Star Award. Beyond choreography, Guerra is a graphic designer, web designer, and freelance arts journalist. She spent the last five years as Art Director of the national Art New England magazine, followed by her current position at Princeton University Press. As a writer, she is Senior Contributor to The Arts Fuse (curating its weekly “top pick” dance events across New England), and a ballet and contemporary dance critic for the Toronto-based Fjord Review, and Vancouver-based Dance International magazine. In 2017, Guerra relocated to Princeton, NJ—expanding her artistic involvement to include the Mid-Atlantic in addition to her ongoing work in New England. She was soon elected to serve on the Board of Dance New Jersey (a nonprofit resource for New Jersey’s expansive dance scene) as a thought leader for new public programming across the state. Guerra frequently acts as a guest choreographer, artist, panelist, moderator, speaker, and advocate for the arts throughout the Northeast, and continues to split her time, traveling between Princeton and Boston for her work in the arts.