ABOUT

Biography

Ruby Morales is committed to equity, facilitating life-affirming spaces, and cultivating community relationships rooted in reciprocity, trust, and love through life and her artmaking.  She’s a dance artivist investigating culturally informed teaching methods, circular leadership models, and her relationship with movement as a bgirl and Mexican style cumbia. After receiving a BFA from Arizona State University she began touring with CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater and Tucson, AZ based choreographer Yvonne Montoya. She recently toured with internationally renowned creative Liz Lerman performing Wicked Bodies. In partnership with the city of Tempe (AZ), she also toured her own evening length show, Breaking Pachanga. She’s CONTRA-TIEMPO’s Resource Director and co-founder of The Pachanga Collective. In recognition of her leadership Ruby is the inaugural recipient of The Association of Performing Arts Professional’s Spark for Change award (national) and the 2023 Performing Artist Mayor’s Arts award (AZ). She continues to learn and lead as a previous B.A.C. Fellowship Mentor, a 2021 National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) Advocacy Leadership Fellow, a 2021 Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellow, 2023 NALAC Leadership Institute Fellow, and 2023 Critical Response Process Certification Program participant. Ruby has been awarded a Research and Development and Professional Development Grant from the AZ Commission on the Arts, The Artist Forward Fund from Artlink, multiple Phoenix Project Support Grant, The Phoenix Artist to Work Grant, and others.  

Artistic Statement

"I am an artista who is inspired by the effects of emotions on a human and their relationship with the world. The work I create comes from my embodied ancestral knowledge and relationship with the world around me. I am committed to saying yes to myself creatively and to my lived experiences as a Mexican woman, bgirl, first generation American, and progressive thought provoker.”