As a Chicana-Native choreographer and dancer, my work is inspired by history, tradition, and our collective experiences. I believe that movement and rhythm not only work to challenge white supremacy, inequalities, and generations of colonization, but can also bring us together to collectively thrive and tell our stories.
Since childhood, I have always felt connected to and inspired by the stories, style, and fuerza—the pachuquísmo—of the young Mexican American Pachucas and Pachucos of the 1940s, who not only rebelled against mainstream white U. S. culture but challenged the conservative traditions of their Mexican families.
In my process as a choreographer, usually the image comes first: a spinning white plate, an underwater queen, a weeping bounce house, spaghetti hair. When constructing and deconstructing that image in the studio, I practice a sort of radical presence encompassing my body, my spirit, and the image. I aim at breaking open the symbolism in a way that might reveal something about the human condition. That research recycles back into my body and distills into a kernel of physical information that I use as a psychic barometer to navigate a more lengthy research period. The more time I have in this state, the more I am able to articulate tasks that I feel will guide the dancers toward surrender.
The photographs and notes shown here document this process through three works: Tropical Depression, a work in progress set to premiere in May 2019 at Miami Dade Live Arts; Carne Viva, first shown at the American Dance Festival (ADF) in 2016; and Make Believe, first shown at ADF in 2018.
Creating site-specific dance performance is a love affair, beginning with a profound connection to the heart of a particular place. Whether it be dancing throughout a historic coal processing plant turned UNESCO World Heritage Site in Essen, Germany, on the grounds of a Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan, or in rowboats in New York City’s Central Park, the first date, the first step in our creative process is to listen deeply in stillness.
One weekend in October 2017, we led a workshop at Movement Research, a New York City laboratory for the investigation of dance and movement forms. As the cofounders of the Asylum Project, a range of site-specific explorations of sanctuary, edge space, and communal well-being, infused by crip culture / disability culture values, we are interested in poetry and performance as ways of being in the world.
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