“I think I can say more with my body than with words,” Puerto Rican choreographer Kiani del Valle declares at the outset of an hour-long conversation about her practice, her past struggles — and what is shaping up to be her breakout year.
She’s right, as anyone who has witnessed her visceral, heart-wrenching and pulse-pounding performances can attest: They range from her signature piece about grief, “Cortex,” to Y-3’s deeply stirring, life-affirming and unforgettable spring 2026 fashion show in Paris, which had 40 bodies vividly telling stories about ostracism, compassion, resilience, fraternity and impossible love.
Yet del Valle is no slouch over Google Meets, recounting her life story, including the painful moments, and revealing the myriad places she will share her unique art throughout 2026, from Lorde’s ongoing Ultrasound World Tour and Young Miko’s upcoming concerts to the Venice Biennale and a clutch of solo performances across Europe. These include the Elevate Festival in Graz, Austria, on March 6 and Nuits Sonores in Lyon, France, on May 16. She is performing “De Brujas y Fantasmas” in Venice on May 8.
“My calling is to make deep, profound, dramaturgical work,” she says in response to a question about the proliferation of synchronized dance clips on social media. “How can I connect with an audience in like one fucking minute? Or 30 seconds?”
Kiani del Valle
Muriel Florence Rieben
Still, she’s grateful that choreographed movements — at concerts, in fashion shows, and online — is having a moment across the popular culture.
She’s relatively well-known among dance-world insiders — and to such mold-breaking musical artists as Bad Bunny, Travis Scott, Billie Eilish, Aphex Twin and Labrinth, who have called on her for choreography and directing. (Del Valle was behind the stunt choreography on utility poles during Bad Bunny’s electrifying Super Bowl halftime show.)
Bad Bunny performs during halftime of Super Bowl LX between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks at Levi’s Stadium on February 08, 2026 in Santa Clara, California.
Kathryn Riley/Getty Images
“I’m just interested by humanity and stories — and all the colors of what it means to be human,” she says, flicking her long braid from one shoulder to the other. “I still approach my choreography as visual art, and I think that’s what also puts me in a different breed. Honestly, I have felt like the underdog of the dance world. All the attention my work has received in the past five years is a surprise for me, but it also tells me that people want to feel — people really want to understand humanity better.”
Born into a highly artistic family in San Juan, and painting and drawing since pre-school, del Valle first twigged to power of movement at age 11, when her parents took her to see French mime artist Marcel Marceau. “I was so impressed by how much he could say without words, and how moved I was by his performance,” she recalls. “I was like, is this dance or theater?”
A few years later, she spent several months living with an actress aunt while her father sought medical attention abroad for a chronic illness. During this trying time, she was obliged to briefly attend classes at a theater school, where her aunt taught and where it was suggested that she would be excellent at ballet, given her athleticism. Being a tomboy accustomed to climbing trees and underwater harpooning with Papa, del Valle initially balked, but then gave it a whirl.
“Honestly, it felt like it was part of me,” she says. “There was no turning back after that… It’s really a way of communicating, and I also have a quite personal and visceral relationship with dance.
“Until this day, I still find I can access places of myself through dance that I cannot do with any other form… I just go all the way with dance, always.”
Del Valle studied ballet in Puerto Rico and earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from Concordia University in Montreal, where she discovered snow, fashion and many electronic musicians and composers, who soundtrack her performances with blistering beats and stirring sounds. Before launching her Berlin-based KDV Performance Group in 2018, she performed with dance companies in Puerto Rico, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre in New York City, and Sasha Waltz in Berlin.
A scene from Kiani del Valle’s “Cortex.”
Courtesy of Y-3
Del Valle’s father, a sales rep and “frustrated musician” who ultimately became his daughter’s manager and mentor, survived 32 years when the doctors initially gave him only two upon diagnosis. He finally succumbed in 2020, and del Valle still draws on that vast pool of grief.
“There’s an intersection between dance and my process of healing and understanding the world. It’s incredibly connected,” she says. “My father told me, ‘Only art can save us,’ and that has stayed with me forever.”
Many of del Valle’s commissioned works have been one-off performances, and she’s aiming for a residency at a European theater for her KDV ensemble. Her ambitions also include making a feature film in which “the language is dance, with my direction and choreography.”
She certainly has the writing chops for it. The first step in del Valle’s creative process is writing short essays or stories, sometimes scripted like screenplays. “Having a text already conceptualized really helps me on the movement creation process,” she explains. “And then once I’m in the creation process, I go to the paper. I do drawings of my choreography and diagrams and maps of the space.”
Some of these drawings, along with paintings and sculptures by del Valle, are currently on display at the Embajada Gallery in San Juan, her first exhibition.
Del Valle recently attended a choreographers conference in Europe and was surprised to learn that many of them had quit dancing. In turn, some of her fellow attendees were surprised to hear that she was still twitching and twirling at age 41. She considers solo work integral to nourish her ensemble pieces, and for her commissions, whether it’s for a theater, fashion brand or musical artist.
“Keeping myself fresh and in my body allows me to get a bit more wild and experimental with my ideas and also feel them in my body,” she says. “I can’t imagine myself not dancing. I imagine myself adapting to my body and my possibilities. But I think I will dance until I die.”
