Celeste Landeros, Ph.D.

Performance Studies; Interdisciplinary Arts; Dance Studies; Film Studies; Digital Media Production; Professional Writing; Africana, Caribbean, Latin American, and Immigration Studies

Dr. Celeste Landeros is an interdisciplinary artist, arts critic, and performance studies scholar specializing in community-engaged arts inspired by opera, carnival, and contemporary performance. A classically trained soprano, she is the founder and director of Carnival Arts, an arts education program that produces large-scale performance, art exhibits, narrative films, and workshops by artists in carnival traditions from across Europe and the Americas in collaboration Barry University students and public middle school students, youth in afterschool and summer programs, and youth crisis shelters. Her work has received grants from Miami-Dade County, the Florida Department of State Division of Arts and Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts and has been commissioned by the Miami-Dade Aviation Department, the Reading Queer Festival, and Faena Arts. She has appeared in works with contemporary artists including Tino Seghal, Andros Zins-Browne, and Dora Garcia. Dr. Landeros has published extensively on the arts in the popular press, serving as the Latin music critic for the national New Times chain; a dance and visual arts critic for the Miami Herald; and local opera critic for Opera News. She was professional blogger for the Adrienne Arsht Center and the founding editor of Artburstmiami.com. She has published on the arts in scholarly journals, including Dance Research Journal, Conversation Across the Field of Dance Studies, and Small Axe. Dr. Landeros was the co-chair for the Dance and Dance Culture Area of the Popular Culture Association and co-edited the landmark Latinx dance studies anthology, Everynight Life: Culture and Dance in Latin/o America (Duke University Press, 1998). She has held fellowships with the National Endowment for the Arts in dance, theater, and digital media entrepreneurship and was a National Endowment for the Humanities summer fellow in museums. In 2019, the Secretary of State appointed Dr. Landeros to the Florida Folklife Council, where she currently serves as the Vice-Chair.