Silvita Diaz Brown

Silvita Diaz Brown (she/her) is a Mexican-American choreographer, dancer, movement educator, and yoga teacher whose interdisciplinary practice is rooted in contemporary dance, physical theater, acrobatics, and a deep connection to her Mexican heritage. Based in Chicago since 2008, she is the founder and artistic director of Sildance/AcroDanza, a dance-theater company that brings together movement, storytelling, and physicality to explore identity, memory, migration, and belonging. Born and raised in Puebla, Mexico, Silvita holds a BFA in Dance from Universidad de las Américas Puebla and an MFA in Theatre/Movement from York University in Toronto, Canada. Her artistic journey has taken her across Mexico, Canada, the United States, Cuba, Spain, India, and Egypt, where she has performed and collaborated with choreographers, dance companies, theater directors, and multidisciplinary artists. Her yoga and movement teaching practice, developed over more than two decades in Mexico, Canada, and the United States, continues to profoundly influence her choreography, creative process, and approach to performance in addition to her training in partner acrobatics with AcroYoga Montreal and Acro Dutch.  

Silvita’s choreography has been presented and supported by many organizations, including DCASE, the National Museum of Mexican Art, Links Hall, the Chicago Cultural Center, Ragdale residency, See Chicago Dance, Chicago Dancemakers Forum, The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, Ballet 5:8, MOMENTA Dance, Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble, and Malcolm X College, among others. Her work has received support through grants, residencies, and artist development programs that have allowed her to continually expand the possibilities of interdisciplinary performance.  

At the heart of Silvita’s work is an exploration of the self in relationship to history, culture, and the people and places that shape us. Drawing from personal experience and collective memory, she examines identity, desire, grief, resilience, motherhood, migration, and transformation while celebrating the complexity and strength of women’s stories. Her experience as a mother has become an important part of her artistic inquiry, shaping her understanding of lineage, sacrifice, resilience, love, and the ways women’s lives and identities evolve across generations. Inspired by mysticism, history, folklore, and the everyday, she often incorporates elements of magical realism, creating worlds where seemingly contradictory truths can coexist and reveal new possibilities.  

Her most ambitious work to date, Ellas y Yo: Mexicanas, is a full-length dance-theater triptych connecting the lives and legacies of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Frida Kahlo, and Silvita herself. Through contemporary dance, physical theater, acrobatics, bilingual storytelling, poetry, music, and multimedia, the work explores how the past lives within the present and how women navigate identity, cultural expectations, lineage, and freedom across generations. In October 2026, Silvita’s work Ellas y Yo: Mexicanas will be presented as part of the Made in Chicago Artist series. This series provides support for new work and is a collaboration between Pivot Arts, the Physical Theater Festival Chicago, and the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance’s Destinos Festival.