pearl ubungen

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pearl ubungen began her dance training and performance career with the late, great master teacher/theater and dance artist Ed Mock and was part of his last company before Mock’s death of AIDs related causes in 1986.

During the nineties, ubungen’s investigations of place/site/memory reinvigorated the field of community-based arts, re-negotiated the boundaries and critical space between activism/art-making/and community engagement, and placed cross-cultural/ intercultural work at the center of the art-making process. A native of San Francisco and a fourth generation Pilipina American, Ms. ubungen created many works stemming from her experience of subsequent waves of Pilipino diaspora and her interest in ethnic studies, social history and community engagement.

In 2002 ubungen relocated to Boulder, Colorado to deepen her study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism. She embedded her work at Naropa University, the only Buddhist-inspired institution of higher education in North America. From 2002-2006, as the founder and Chair of a new interdisciplinary BFA in Performance, Ms. ubungen developed an undergraduate curriculum for performance training in dance, theater, and voice that centered critical theory and cultural studies while integrating conservatory-style performance training with Naropa’s foundational contemplative practices.

In 2009 ubungen began the process of coming home and performing and making work in San Francisco. ubungen continues to evolve an embodied artistic praxis that integrates the view and practice of meditation with improvisation and composition. ubungen is desirous to find/create/support balance between the academic rigor, textuality and extremes of “higher” education with the provocation of lively embodied practices and broader questions of access, mobility/fluidity, and the infrastructure of the built environment – in particular within the subtle body geography of San Francisco and the more intimate space of family and home.




pearl ubungen began her dance training and performance career with the late, great master teacher/theater and dance artist Ed Mock and was part of his last company before Mock’s death of AIDs related causes in 1986.

During the nineties, ubungen’s investigations of place/site/memory reinvigorated the field of community-based arts, re-negotiated the boundaries and critical space between activism/art-making/and community engagement, and placed cross-cultural/ intercultural work at the center of the art-making process. A native of San Francisco and a fourth generation Pilipina American, Ms. ubungen created many works stemming from her experience of subsequent waves of Pilipino diaspora and her interest in ethnic studies, social history and community engagement.

In 2002 ubungen relocated to Boulder, Colorado to deepen her study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism. She embedded her work at Naropa University, the only Buddhist-inspired institution of higher education in North America. From 2002-2006, as the founder and Chair of a new interdisciplinary BFA in Performance, Ms. ubungen developed an undergraduate curriculum for performance training in dance, theater, and voice that centered critical theory and cultural studies while integrating conservatory-style performance training with Naropa’s foundational contemplative practices.

In 2009 ubungen began the process of coming home and performing and making work in San Francisco. ubungen continues to evolve an embodied artistic praxis that integrates the view and practice of meditation with improvisation and composition. ubungen is desirous to find/create/support balance between the academic rigor, textuality and extremes of “higher” education with the provocation of lively embodied practices and broader questions of access, mobility/fluidity, and the infrastructure of the built environment – in particular within the subtle body geography of San Francisco and the more intimate space of family and home.




pearl ubungen began her dance training and performance career with the late, great master teacher/theater and dance artist Ed Mock and was part of his last company before Mock’s death of AIDs related causes in 1986.

During the nineties, ubungen’s investigations of place/site/memory reinvigorated the field of community-based arts, re-negotiated the boundaries and critical space between activism/art-making/and community engagement, and placed cross-cultural/ intercultural work at the center of the art-making process. A native of San Francisco and a fourth generation Pilipina American, Ms. ubungen created many works stemming from her experience of subsequent waves of Pilipino diaspora and her interest in ethnic studies, social history and community engagement.

In 2002 ubungen relocated to Boulder, Colorado to deepen her study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism. She embedded her work at Naropa University, the only Buddhist-inspired institution of higher education in North America. From 2002-2006, as the founder and Chair of a new interdisciplinary BFA in Performance, Ms. ubungen developed an undergraduate curriculum for performance training in dance, theater, and voice that centered critical theory and cultural studies while integrating conservatory-style performance training with Naropa’s foundational contemplative practices.

In 2009 ubungen began the process of coming home and performing and making work in San Francisco. ubungen continues to evolve an embodied artistic praxis that integrates the view and practice of meditation with improvisation and composition. ubungen is desirous to find/create/support balance between the academic rigor, textuality and extremes of “higher” education with the provocation of lively embodied practices and broader questions of access, mobility/fluidity, and the infrastructure of the built environment – in particular within the subtle body geography of San Francisco and the more intimate space of family and home.