Russ Ligtas is a poly-disciplinary visual and performing artist living in Manila. He began his practice in Cebu as a painting major at the University of the Philippines Fine Arts program. He employs an autobiographical approach onto sculpture, video, text, and choreography to create hybrid experiences that indicate notions of the self and foster uncanny encounters of its manifestations as presence, persona, and myth.
In 2016, he received the Alvin Erasga Tolentino Choreography Award earning him a Koryolab Choreographer’s Showcase Grant to stage his first ensemble piece “Postcard” at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. In the same year, he was awarded an Asian Cultural Council fellowship to investigate performance forms in New York, Bali, and Thailand. Ligtas is an active collaborator to Eisa Jocson in her HappyLand Trilogy as co-creator and performer, touring together across Europe and Asia since 2017. He also engages with groups for experimental theater, marine conservation, and community development in his intention to reconnect art with meaning in everyday life. He has been awarded residencies with The Academy of Everything Is Possible, Cudamani Institute, Tentacles Art Space, ADAM Artist Lab, the High Hide, and Casa San Miguel Center for the Arts in San Antonio among others.