OCTAVIO CAMPOS - BIOGRAPHY
Miami born Cuban-American Octavio Campos is the founder and Artistic Director of Camposition.
He has been collaborating in theater, dance, music, television, film and the visual arts for the past 20 years, with over 100 professional credits. He studied dance and composition at the State University of New York at Purchase, Martha Graham School, Folkwang Schule of Pina Bausch, and the Lincoln Center Director's Lab. His work has been performed in theaters and opera houses throughout Europe, North and South America. He has collaborated within the works of Robert Wilson, Philip Glass and Vivienne Newport, among others. Campos was honored at the Berliner Theater Treffen 2001 with an honorable mention award for his choreography, Miami Choreographers Fellowship for 2005 and Interdisciplinary Arts Fellow 2009 for the State of Florida.He has given master classes and workshops worldwide, notably at the Florida Dance Festival, Catholic University Belgium, Centro Cultural Lima, Frankfurt Schule de Darstellender Kunst, The Theater Offensive, St. Petersburg Music Hall in Russia and the Broward Correctional Institute for Women in Florida. As a commercial artist and producer he has worked for Cirque du Solei, Bacardi, MySPACE, Sony, Coca Cola, L'Oreal, Virgin Atlantic Records, and Donald Trump. Upon his return to Miami from an extensive performance career in Germany, Campos founded the interdisciplinary performance ensemble, Camposition, whose productions are being commissioned by the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami Dade College, Dade Community Foundation, City of Miami Beach, Florida Arts Council and PS 122, New York. Currently he is a on faculty at the New World School of the Arts, where he has served the dance, theater and music divisions since 1995 teaching his original style of dance theater technique.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work is associate, subversive, and provocative - a direct response of how I see, represent and feel about what is happening in the world right now.

Reality and phenomenon inform my process.

My work digs deep inside of social ills and exposes the beauty in ugly things by deflowering the irony of contemporary life.

As I research our past, especially my roots which are in Miami and watch the present staged sensuality, political corruption and the self-destructive practices engendered by the cult of the perfect body, my hunger to comment and make new work increases.

By pushing the boundary between dance and activism I carry a burden of responsibility that has become a motor in my life.

I am interested in misrepresented and underserved communities and figuring out theatrical ways to take their misunderstood invisible voices and turn them into thought provoking dance theater works.

My process helps me figure out where those societies place their edges. I then take each memory, each struggle, each situation and use those frames to define my vision of our experiences.

When these boundaries momentarily collapse, there is an ensuing sense of vastness--an understanding of how much freedom and space we really have.

I embrace that space and will continue to assault it with guttural, instinctual and controversial themes, creating front edge dance theater pieces that ask and answer many questions.

Miami, January, 2009
Octavio Campos