B I O G R A P H Y

Marcos Duran, MFA, is a California Arts Council sponsored dance theater artist born and raised in San Jose, California. After directing the Brooklyn based Marcos Duran Performance Group from 2009–2017, he has danced in San Diego creating Moving Works performance media and live shows that examine the intersectional spectrum of “movement beings.”

Duran’s dance film, Best To Move, is a diaristic self-portrait that highlights the enduring maintenance of Indigenous/Latiné mental health in today’s age of geo-political, technological, and race warfare. This work will be presented at the Dance Studies Association Conference of Speculative Choreographies: Bodies, Economies, and Movement in a World in Flux, at California State University, Long Beach on October 23-25, 2026.

December 2025 : Moving Works, with Bay Area dance artists Jenni Hong and Elise Knudson, co–produced a triple bill entitled (y)OURS at ODC Theater in San Francisco. For this show, Marcos created Re/Union, a new dance that embodies a retelling of the Valderrama’s history of migrating to the Bay Area from Imperial Valley/Méxicali in the 1960’s.

April – May 2025 : What are we enduring? How do we endure? Moving Works produced In the Name of Duration, a weekly performance practice with a collective of San Diego creatives including stop-motion animation artist Derek Weiler Ph.D., Emily Aust MFA, Sarah Clark, Amal ElWardi MFA, Victor De La Fuente, Eric Geiger and Nicholas Naylor Leyland – ultimately creating a 3 hour live performance experience for interactive audiences. With voiceover testimonials from medical professionals in the Sanford Compassionate Communication Fellowship, and special musical guest Sophie Webber, this interdisciplinary performance gallery ran 12 hours in two days at City Heights Performance Annex. In the Name of Duration was inspired by Duran's time at the Marina Abramović Institute near Athens, Greece in 2024.

But let’s rewind just a bit.

Since 2017, Marcos has been working as a dance educator at UC San Diego, teaching courses in dance theater production, dance on film, contact improvisation, contemporary dance, and more. Duran was honored with the Outstanding Group Communication and Leadership award by the Center for Student Involvement in 2020. He was selected to join the UC San Diego Health: Sanford Compassionate Communication Academy Fellowship cohort of Fall 2024. Marcos served as one of the few artist faculty in a unit of medical researchers creating new “compassionate communication” curriculum for clinical residents, and he continues to examine and refresh his practice of compassion throughout his pedagogy and artistry.

2023-2024 : Duran was a Far South/Border North Grant recipient sponsored by the California Arts Council with the Conrad Prebys Foundation. His evening length dance production, Dancing With Dignity, premiered at the City Heights Performance Annex in May 2024. A priority included sharing this creative process with dance students at Chula Vista High School, uplifting the notion of dignity to help prepare them for navigating professional dance opportunities in the future. During this time, Marcos also produced and directed two dances for the camera, Best to Move and Guardians of Water.

In 2022, Marcos toured his evening length solo, Shapeshifter, commissioned by Strand Theater for a debut at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland, Maine. His signature solo Exit to Wonderland was invited to Visionary Dance Theater’s Zen Festival in San Diego, as well as in San Diego Dance Theater’s WOW Festival show.

In 2021, Marcos was commissioned by Malashock Dance to make a new work, Neck, Knife, for their first Everyday Dances production at the Mingei International Museum. His art writing was published in HereIn, a journal for artists and writers, in addition to being featured in SD Voyager Magazine. Furthermore, Duran’s short film, Minced, won the Best Performances award at the LA Experimental Film Festival after premiering in Disco Riot’s A Year of DisDance.

At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, Marcos was in the final days of completing his MFA in Dance Theatre at UC San Diego. He took refuge in creating Acts of Togetherness-19, a social media series that cultivated international, digital performance collaborations.

As a San Diego Fellowship graduate researcher at UC San Diego, he made three works between 2017-2020 that culminated 15 years of choreography. Heel, Skull (60 min), The Rules of the Game (25 min), and his thesis work, The Underground (95 min), all premiered at La Jolla Playhouse theater district. They exhibited accounts of social choreography, craniosacral audience integration, and interdisciplinary collaborations between visual arts, music, technology, and theater.

Now, let’s really go back…

A child of the 80’s and 90’s, Marcos developed his theatrical and experimental sensibility with his passion for fiction novels and independent films. When he was 15, he organically began solo dance improvisation, a private and diaristic act of self nurturing and exploration.

When he was 18, Marcos began summer training in José Limón modern dance technique at San Jose State University. Much of his subsequent BFA dance training at UC Santa Barbara deepened his understanding of the Limón technique, in addition to release techniques, contact / improvisation, choreography (concert, environmental, digital), and production.

A New Yorker from 2008-2017, he directed and performed in Marcos Duran Performance Group. As an artist-in-residence at Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn, his mission was to create and perform works that researched the spectrum of humanity within himself and collaborating dancers. He was invited to share his work at Movement Research at The Judson Church, Dixon Place, La MaMa Experimental Theater, Theater for the New City, 92nd St Y, Center for Performance Research, Triskelion Arts, and Green Space among many other site specific spaces. From 2005-2008, he created and shared work in Santa Barbara, San Diego, and San Francisco.

As a performer from 2000-2024, Marcos learned from working with Daniel Charon, Liam Clancy, Nancy Colahan, Kellye Dodd, Faye Driscoll, Erica Essner, Eric Geiger, Meredith Glisson, Valerie Houston, Jenni Hong, Jean Isaacs, Risa Jaroslow, Keith Johnson, Misa Kelly, Eun Hee Lee, John Malashock, Bronwen MacArthur, Dance Monks, Stephanie Nugent, Jody Oberfelder, Christy O'Harris, Jerry Pearson, Christopher Pilafian, Tonia Shimin, Yolande Snaith, Khamla Somphanh, Sasha Spielvogel, Terry Wilson, Bill Young, and the master works of José Limón as directed by Alice Condodina and Gary Masters. He has performed at national venues such as Jacobs Pillow MA, The Kitchen NYC, Diavolo LA, and Counter Pulse SF. He has toured internationally to South Korea, China, Mexico, Wales, and Ireland.