José Lapaz-Rodriguez is a Dominican dance artist, actor, and model residing in Brooklyn, NY. He came to the United States at the age of 11. During his teenage years in Trenton, NJ, he had the opportunity to explore what it is to have a community, and he discovered a variety of passions ranging from environmental science, photography, videography, painting, and then, dance. Lapaz-Rodriguez is a recipient of the Hanya Holm dance scholarship and is a 2021 magna cum laude graduate with a BFA in Dance from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.

Lapaz-Rodriguez researches the interconnection of contemporary dance and voguing in concert dance in queer bodies, as he is part of the ballroom scene. He has performed works by Matthew Rushing, Pam Tanowitz, Jordan Lloyd, Stefanie Batten-Bland, Roderick George, Maleek Washington, Rashaad Newsome for ‘Assembly,’ and Kyle Marshall. Aside from concert dance, he has performed as a cameo artist in the Off-Broadway Hercules by Chase Brock in 2019. During the pandemic, he collaborated with Mandy Moore for the Facebook Messenger commercial, served as principal dancer and choreographer for ANANAS by Tyler Pope, and danced in Chad Lawson’s ‘Prelude in D Major’ VEVO music video.

Besides dance, Lapaz-Rodriguez is a freelance actor, recently working as a principal actor for Playland by Georden West and Track 7 by Sean Perry. As a model, he has been featured in a variety of print and e-magazines such as Gayletter, Mission Magazine, The New York Times, Self Service Magazine, Vanity Fair, and Paper.