Marta Leal

Marta Leal was forced to leave her native Chile when she was 23, because of her community activism and involvement with the left-wing student group at the University of Chile. She lived in Paris for more than ten years, and then moved to Venezuela where her daughter Morella was born. They came to the U.S. fifteen years ago, and Marta has since earned an MSW from the UConn School of Social Work. She is a social worker in Hartford. She believes strongly in the power of art, music, and dance as ways to express peoples’ struggles and maintain traditions for the next generation. Marta advised the Judy Dworin Performance Project’s 2001 production of ¿dónde estás?, teaching the traditional Chilean dance cueca which was incorporated into the production as a metaphor for the lost partners and children of the Mothers of the Disappeared.