Fräulein Talents: Kianí Del Valle “It’s a balance that I really need”

Kianí Del Valle: I’ve always had a pretty clear sense of what moves me. My art has been an incredible tool to understand who I am in the world. There’s never really been a separation between my development as a human being and my journey as an artist – they’ve always been intertwined.

I don’t know if I believe in the idea of “being at peace.” For me, it would mean feeling safe, feeling like you know where you are. I do feel safe in the process of knowing and discovering myself through my work. What anchors me is discovery, not arrival. I actually think the fact that I never arrive is what keeps my drive going. There’s also a literal dimension to that feeling. I’ve been an immigrant for about 25 years now. I’ve lived in seven cities – the longest in New York, Montreal, and Berlin. Those places have felt like homes at different times. But I’ve always been in motion, always discovering. When my father passed away five years ago, I felt a strong pull to reconnect with my home and be closer to my mother. But Berlin is home, New York is home, Montreal is home. That sense of not fully arriving is actually what keeps me searching and growing.

My work is very concerned with the complexities of being human and trying to understand our existence. That’s what drives my practice. I spend a lot of time in my head. I write a lot and imagine a lot. Most of my pieces start as text, then I bring them into the body, and eventually they might become drawings or short films. So my practice has three stages: text, body, and image. Dance helps ground me; otherwise, I’d just live inside my thoughts. It’s a balance that I really need.

The only physical place where I truly felt like, “wow, this is my place,” was Vieques in Puerto Rico – a small island with deep Indigenous ancestry. When I went there in 2016, I had a very intense reaction to this island, like I felt the lineage of the Indigenous people who lived there and were massacred. My name, Kianí, is also an Indigenous Arawakan name. I often feel like I’m a contemporary Indigenous person navigating the world. Being in Vieques awakened something very deep in me.

Puerto Rico will always be home. I grew up in a family of activists. Puerto Rico is a US colony, and my parents were part of movements that fought for its liberation. So, from a very young age, I was deeply aware of social justice and of the colonial history we carry. Puerto Rico was first colonized by Spain and then by the United States – and that colonial relationship still exists today. Even though we have US passports, culturally we are Latin American. We speak Spanish and have a completely different culture. I don’t consider myself American.

But my life became more complex when I left Puerto Rico at 17. I’m now in my late thirties and I’ve spent most of my adult life abroad. Wherever I go, I carry my culture with me. I say with pride that I’m Puerto Rican. Through my work, I’ve built deep relationships with collaborators and friends around the world, and those relationships allow me to feel at home in many places, but culturally and spiritually, my connection to Puerto Rico – and to my ancestors – is very intense.

The whole process was insane. When it was announced that Bad Bunny would perform at the Super Bowl, I remember reading the news and thinking to myself: I’m going to do the Super Bowl. It wasn’t ego. It was more like a deep knowing. I’ve sacrificed so much for my craft. I’ve missed seeing my goddaughter and my nephews grow up because I’ve dedicated my life to this work.

I don’t come from a wealthy family – actually, I come from no money. Through my art, I’ve even been able to support my family. In the last few years, I began realizing that the work I’ve been doing for two decades has built a network. Everywhere I go I know people, and people know my work. I started reaching out to people in the industry, asking if they knew who was producing the Super Bowl. At the same time, something funny happened: Several different teams that were pitching creative treatments for the performance asked to include me because I’m Puerto Rican. At one point, I realized my name was attached to five different proposals. Then, slowly those projects started falling through, and I thought maybe it wouldn’t happen. But one day, a director contacted me on Instagram, asked me to sign an NDA, and invited me to join the project.

Yes, and when they told me I would be choreographing El Apagón, I felt the weight of that responsibility immediately. “El apagón” means “the blackout.” The day they told me I would choreograph it, my mother in Puerto Rico had no electricity. That’s how real this issue is for us. Puerto Rico’s electrical system has been privatized, and people are paying more and more for worse service. It’s directly connected to our colonial status. So I approached the piece with enormous focus. I wanted every detail to carry meaning. For example, the electrical poles exploding during the performance – I insisted on that. In Puerto Rico, we see those poles exploding all the time during blackouts. I cast acrobats who were comfortable working close to pyro because I knew I wanted that visual. I was very involved not just in the choreography, but also in how it would be filmed – the cameras, the angles – because I’m also a director.

The scale of the Super Bowl is overwhelming. There are so many directors, so many producers, the NFL – it’s a huge machine. But I was focused on doing justice to the message. Then suddenly, after the broadcast, the attention was massive. The Super Bowl is already the most watched broadcast in the world, and this was the most watched one ever. In 24 hours, I gained twenty thousand followers. I didn’t know if I wanted to cry, throw up, celebrate, or hide. It was overwhelming. But now, weeks later, I’m starting to feel proud. Because it wasn’t just about being on the Super Bowl – it was about representing something important for my country.

At the center of everything is the body. Even though most of my ideas begin as text – essays or stories – the real laboratory is my body. I still have a childlike relationship with movement. There’s always something new to discover through it. The other practices – drawing, film, sculpture – help expand the dramaturgy of my work. They allow me to capture things I discover physically. Right now, I’m developing my visual practice more deeply. I’ve made seven short films, around twenty solos, and several ensemble works with my company. I’m also experimenting with sculpture. But all of that comes from movement. If the movement practice didn’t exist, none of the other things would happen.

Definitely. I might write something first, but once I explore it physically, it often goes far beyond what I imagined on paper. Then drawing becomes a way to capture those discoveries. That’s why my work has become so transdisciplinary. From the outside it might look chaotic, but for me it’s actually grounding. Each medium holds a piece of the same investigation.

I’m trying to find peace and also answers. The world is very broken, and the human mind is capable of both incredible beauty and incredible destruction. My practice is a way of communicating with those questions. If I didn’t make art, honestly, I think I would go insane. Art keeps me grounded.

I’m learning that now – thanks to my therapist. I’m trying to understand that rest is also part of evolution. It’s something I’m learning a bit late, but it’s never too late. I feel like I haven’t stopped working for 25 years. It’s both a blessing and a curse.

Berlin was one of the greatest gifts of my life. It allowed me to truly ground myself in my practice. In New York, you need multiple jobs just to survive. In Montreal, I was studying and working at the same time. Berlin gave me space. That’s where I built my dance company, developed my work, formed deep friendships, and lived my most important love story as an adult. But when my father passed away in 2020, something shifted. He was incredibly important to my life and to the way I see the world. After he died, I had to learn how to continue that relationship with him in another way. For some reason, Berlin wasn’t the right place for that process. I started spending more time elsewhere – Sicily, Greece, the US – trying to find a new sense of connection.

Berlin will always be home to me. But my relationship with it has evolved. Now I go there when I have projects with my dancers or with theatres. Otherwise, I’m mostly between Los Angeles and Puerto Rico, closer to my mother.

That’s a difficult question. Honestly, I rarely feel like I’m enough. I’m never satisfied with the work – I always feel like it could go further. But what saves me from going completely crazy is the relationships I build while creating. The collaborators, the dancers, the people who share the process with me. My work is also a space for healing. Even if I feel like I’m never enough, the love and care I bring to those relationships grounds me. That’s what keeps everything human.