I am an immigrant living in the third space between cultures. A practitioner of ancestral and post-modern dances. A movement healer and a movement organizer. A border-crosser and bridge-builder. A dance-and-change-maker.
I follow in the footsteps of other artivistas who came before me, Latin American artist-activists who could not afford to ignore or separate themselves from their countries’ dire political conditions. Dona Ivone Lara, Eduardo Galeano, Augusto Boal, Gilberto Gil, Gloria Anzaldúa, Martha Gonzalez. Like them, my art is my activism; my activism is my art.
As a Latina immigrant based in the United States, I find myself at an intersection of social struggles—including racism, sexism, and xenophobia. My collaborators, students, mentors, and co-organizers are movement-builders responding to these realities, fighting for racial justice, intersectional feminism, LGBTQ rights, and rights for immigrants and undocumented people. My contribution to these social movements is a movement practice for liberation.
My commitment is to build a movement through movement.
A movement that honors the Afro-Ameríndio (African and indigenous) ancestry of Latin America—through streets dances (like Samba de Roda, Casino Rueda Salsa, Cumbia and Reggeaton) and the spiritual dances of the orishás (Yoruba-derived deities present in Afro-Latin religious practices throughout the diaspora).
A movement of diasporic play. At once fluid and grounded. Rhythmic and spacious. Subtle and expansive. Rigorous and free. Impossible to master and full of possibility.
A movement that embodies the de-colonial and radically inclusive vision that guides social justice movements. That generates valuable knowledge about how to be in the world. That has a creative and symbiotic relationship with its politics— allowing the politics to ground the craft and the craft to further the politics.
Through performances, classes, and on-going organization alongside communities, I am dedicated to instigating, supporting, and sustaining this vision.