Latin American choreography breaks out
Elizabeth Boubion didn’t spend a lot of time planning and grant-writing before she launched the first Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers in 2014. She pulled the program together in about a month and presented eight local choreographers, who leapt at the opportunity to show their work alongside Latino peers from elsewhere at Oakland’s Temescal Arts Center.
“There was no festival focusing on contemporary Latin American dance, rather than folklorico or more traditional dance forms,” says Boubion who, at that time of the festival launch, recently had started producing work with her Piñata Dance Collective. “We wanted to bring more contemporary voices forward — work that breaks gender roles or is more abstracted.”
Last year, she expanded the offerings for the festival’s second edition, held at San Francisco’s Mission Cultural Center. This year’s ¡FLACC! is bigger still.
Though run on a shoestring, the 3rd Annual Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers presents 17 choreographers — from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Venezuela, New Mexico, Southern California and the Bay Area — Friday through Sunday at Dance Mission Theater. Each performance will be followed by a 20-minute panel discussion.
The performances are organized around three themes: Friday’s program, “Remembering Pulse,” features queer-transgender Latino choreographers responding to the June 12 massacre at Orlando’s Pulse night club, a gathering spot for that city’s LGBTQ community. Among the artists presenting work are Jose Navarette and Rosa Frazier-Rodriguez from Los Angeles, Guatemala’s Momentum and Bay Area artists Sebastian Hernandez, Victor Talledos and Javier Stell-Flésquez.
Saturday’s program, “Las Mujeres,” showcases Riverside’s Primera Generación and local choreographers Diana Lara, Karla Quintero, Juliana Mendoca and Catherine Marie Davalos. Davalos will present “Cruising,” an excerpt from “Son,” an evenin g length work-in-progress addressing Chicano stereotypes and set to War’s 1975 hit “Low Rider.”
“I’m probably preaching to the choir,” says Davalos, an acclaimed Chicana choreographer who is also a behind-the-scenes force on the Bay Area arts scene thanks to her position as founding director of dance at St. Mary’s College. “That’s OK. I’m usually the only Latina in a festival. … What I love about FLACC — it’s our people, we’re speaking the same language, with similarities that put us together in dialogue.”
The event closes Sunday afternoon with “Indigenistas,” a program focused on the struggles of indigenous communities, including those involved in the ongoing protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. The performers include New Mexico’s Dancing Earth, Primera Generación and the Bay Area’s Cuicacalli Dance Company, Zoe Klein, Gabriel Mata and Adrian Arias.
“The diversity among us is so vast,” says Boubion. She said the fest’s three loosely thematic programs allowed her avoid difficult curatorial decisions. “I couldn’t imagine putting a sacred deer dancer from an indigenous company back to back with someone who is presenting a piece exploring queer erotica,” she says.
Many of the choreographers explore an array of devices in their pieces, and two threads running throughout are a commitment to storytelling and an engagement with text.
“I really believe that FLACC should be open to movement (artists) and physical-performance artists as well as trained contemporary dancers,” Boubion says. “Most of them are classically trained. They all seem to have a clear story and intention. People are (acting) or using texts or prerecorded (material) as a vehicle for revealing a lot of oneself.”
Born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley, Boubion moved to the Bay Area to study at the Tamalpa Institute, which is dedicated to spreading the concepts of postmodern dance pioneer Anna Halprin. She created the Piñata Dance Collective after creating a multimedia piece that led her to explore the quintessential Mexican party game.
“I kept on researching more about piñatas, and found they came from China originally, and were brought by Marco Polo to Spain and Italy,” Boubion says. “From Spain they were brought to Mexico, where the Aztecs had similar rituals. I love the symbolism (of) this interwoven global practice where you’re creating something and destroying it, and collecting the goodies inside. It’s a pretty great metaphor for what artists are doing at FLACC.”