Antonio Ramos is an award-winning dancer, choreographer, and certified bodywork practitioner. He is the Artistic Director of Antonio Ramos and the Gangbangers. His work focuses on emotional and social themes as they manifest through his identity as a queer, HIV+ artist, and Puerto Rican artist who was born on the island. He takes this subject matter, full of darkness and difficulty, and creates joyous, celebratory choreography that harnesses the beauty in life while confronting the audience with challenging themes such as sexuality, the body, and histories of colonization. Ramos holds a B.F.A. in Dance from SUNY Purchase.

The Chocolate Factory Theater is an artist-centered organization, built by and for artists. Co-founders Sheila Lewandowski and Brian Rogers began making work together in 1995 and quickly saw the need for a creative home to support their work and the work of fellow experimental performance-based artists. The Chocolate Factory therefore has grown and developed within and through a creative process that centers the development of new work, as guided by makers.

The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center Inc. is a Puerto Rican/Latinx multi-arts cultural institution that has demonstrated a broad-minded cultural vision and inclusive philosophy rooted in NYC’s Lower East Side/Loisaida. While focused on the cultivation, presentation, and preservation of Puerto Rican and Latinx culture, we are equally committed to a multi-ethnic / international latitude, determined to operate in a polyphonic manner that provides affordable working space and venues to artists, small arts organizations, emergent and independent community producers that reflect the cultural diversity of the LES and our City.

CEREMONIA is commissioned by Abrons Arts Center and The Chocolate Factory Theater and is presented in partnership with The Clemente. Support for CEREMONIA was provided by the Mertz-Gilmore Late Stage Stipend Program.