Celeste Lanuza

Performing Artist, Director, and Professor

Celeste Lanuza (she/her) is currently completing her Ph.D. studies focusing on Latiné female identity representation in the performing arts. She combines her work as a producer, writer, professor, choreographer, and actress to analyze constructs of implicit messaging, code-switching, and the labor of performance. Coming from a family of immigrants from Honduras, Mexico, and Basque, her focus on Latiné female representation is energized to reclaim constructed cultural views of embodiment as well as acknowledging the impact leadership abilities and positions will have on rewriting the narrative for Latiné females in the performing arts. Ms. Lanuza's philosophy of building agency that acknowledges the hybridity of the Latiné experience mobilizes her work. Lanuza seeks to energize females to be critical thinkers and to challenge norms. As an English second language learner who overcame stuttering and confidence as an underrepresented female presence in education and theater, the power of performing arts as a singer, dance, and music composer elevated her positionality. Lanuza's trajectory as a mentor, director, and performing artist having built networks internationally touring, presenting work at Sundance and Tribeca Film Festival, Amazon Prime, Radio City Hall, and top-tier theater companies inform her current work. Ms. Lanuza's eclectic work has been recognized in the Canadian Maganize Root & STEM bridging science and arts, Dance Teacher Magazine staging classic repertoire, the San Diego Union-Tribune elevating the potentiality of Latiné visibility on and offstage, and in Broadway World. Ms. Lanuza is motivated to empower Latinx females, females at large, and non-gender binary individuals to enforce authentic spaces and to continue to reach for higher heights.

Back