Longtime DanceAspen performer ascends to choreographer in latest show
DanceAspen Studio shoot with Jonah Delgado and Jane Mumford.
Myles Tracy/Courtesy photo
DanceAspen will present a free preview of “A Sneak Peek of re:imagine with Jonah Delgado and Jane Mumford” from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Feb. 11 at the Aspen Art Museum rooftop, where local choreographer Delgado will share a working rehearsal of his upcoming contemporary work “Arbitrary Relevance” along with Mumford’s “Empty Handed.”
No registration is required.
Delgado initially joined DanceAspen aspiring to be a dancer. Three years later, he found himself with choreography added to his skill set.
“I hadn’t given much thought about being a choreographer, but once I started doing it, I really enjoyed it. I think it will definitely be something that I continue to explore in my career,” Delgado said.
When DanceAspen faced lack of funding for choreographers,it ultimately led to the discovery of local talent within the company itself.
“It’s something unique to DanceAspen,” Founder and Executive Director Laurel Winton said. “It became very clear that a few of these dancers had a unique eye and talent for choreography. It started as a necessity, and now it feels part of our identity to have some in-house work.”
Winton added that when Delgado stepped into the choreographer’s role in 2024, his first piece, “Love All,” was a hit. This led to DanceAspen becoming a platform for Delgado to cultivate his skills and create a piece based on the theme “re:imagine.”
“It’s all about reimagining classics, and I kind of went down the philosophy route of it all. There’s a French philosopher, Michel Foucault, and he has a paper he wrote about the relationship between significance and signifiers,” Delgado said. “For example, if we say the word ‘cats’ and that’s the signifier, then the significance is actually what we think of/what comes to mind when we think of cats.”
According to Delgado’s interpretation, Foucault’s concepts reveal a sometimes unstable system of language. He shared how these ideas apply to the upcoming performance of “Arbitrary Relevance,” which will be performed with all six dancers in the piece.
“His whole philosophy is that there’s no inherent relationship between these words and the meaning we give to them. And so I kind of wanted to portray that in movement,” Delgado said. “It’s very similar, in the sense that movement has no inherent meaning until you give it meaning.”
To Delgado, the dance is about the exploration of how audience members superimpose their perspectives onto the movement, based on vocabulary.
“There are a lot of gestures that seem very familiar, but taken out of context, they don’t really have the same meaning, or they technically shouldn’t have any meaning, but we recognize them as signifiers, so we ultimately put significance to them,” he said.
Delgado chose the title of his piece, “Arbitrary Relevance,” based on the notion that it’s relevant only because people make it relevant, so “ultimately everything is arbitrarily relevant.”
DanceAspen’s Delgado is a virtuoso dancer, which will be palpable in the piece.
“I like dance to be quite high energy. I think that’s shown in the final section of the piece. There’s definitely an ebb and flow of intensity, but it ends with a lot of energy,” Delgado said.
Delgado is both in “re:imagine” as a dancer and as a choreographer. He does not dance in the piece he choreographed, instead prioritizing that “his” dancers know they are supported.
Delgado noted that he’s impressed with Winton giving dancers the opportunity to choreograph, as well as free range to explore their own ideas within the show’s parameters.
One of Delgado’s future goals is to enter pieces like “Arbitrary Relevance” into choreographic competitions.
The Aspen Art Museum is located at 637 E. Hyman Ave. For more information, visit aspenartmuseum.org/event/danceaspen-sneak-peek-3-2026/.
