Desde Aquí
“Desde Aquí”
September 15 and 16, 2023 at Red Eye Theater
Who:
José A. Luis - choreographer/dancer
Lizzette Chapa - dancer
Margaret Ogas - dancer
What:
José A. Luis’ new evening work invites Lizzette Chapa and Margaret Ogas; held on the start of National Hispanic Heritage Month and on Mexican Independence Day. Traversing alone and together. Holding memory and identity. Feeling time and pushing against it. These three Mexican rooted dance artists reflect who they have been asked to be and where they go, desde aquí.
Where:
Red Eye Theater
2213 Snelling Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55404
When:
Friday and Saturday
September 15 and 16, 2023
630pm - Doors Open/Small Gallery/Conversation
655pm - Doors Close
7pm - Performance
Reservations
A brief background:
What does it mean to invite people into one vision? How do you make space for histories, stories, uncertainties, departures, and returning? Emerging from a history of solo works revolving around my own experiences, I have struggled to find a clear way of welcoming other stories to co-exist with mine. The urgency to share more of my work with my family while striving for personal growth layers my approach to this piece. What vision I had is now in a state of acceptance; an echo of where I am. I fall back on the memory of where it started emotionally and logically, to lead, desde aquí.
Origins
“Desde aquí” was felt after a conversation in which my parents discussed going back to Mexico, specifically my mother. After leaving their home and family in Veracruz and Oaxaca, they raised my brothers and I in Racine, Wisconsin while navigating their own self of belonging in foreign land, language, and customs (or lack thereof). With the blessing of grandchildren, my mother’s matriarchal instinct kicked in, delaying her return 12 more years. Her plans in Mexico to travel with her brother evaporated as he passed in summer 2021. Belonging, navigating, identity, and reframing have been at the forefront for her. It is in this moment, I reflect and realize how these themes have been the core of my own work the last 10 years.
The emergence of this piece started from an urgency to share more of my work with my family while the choreographer in me longed to push beyond what I’ve known. With each piece, I leave a trace of what else I’m interested in. “By the Time We’re Through” ended with three bodies in space, 1 in proximal relation to 2. This image started a new solo; 5 minutes to be exact. 5 minutes of trumpet music I had found and 5 minutes that fit under the Walker’s Choreographer’s Evening audition time limit. A challenge to communicate everything at once in this time frame with one body. A balance of the known (solo work) with the unknown (how to fit in time). How do I push against these realms? Perhaps by leaning on that solo and the two bodies in space, to hold space. Then, repeat the formula and vary it twice more.
Logic and emotion flow within this work through memory and presence, tension and acceptance. A question of what it means to search, connect, and bring three Mexican identifying/rooted dance artists and personnel while offering space to exist in my vision walked the line of “gathering”. This choice was felt with the departure of collaborators and the truth that I cannot hold anyone. Still, the effort to reach and find the Mexican artistic community proved how disconnected I was to them; a parallel in my moves across Milwaukee, Chicago, and now here. It is over time true connections are made and maintained. It is with work and communication that we learn from and about each other. Things we all intuitively know, but need a reminder of — as I needed.
Through the materialization of movement I have listened to my body, heart, and memory of spaces. With everyone who has touched this piece behind the scenes, I have felt their own history, dreams, and reality arrive at different times. It has freed me in uncomfortable ways from my necessity to always know. It has bent, held, and stretched me to the realm of accepting the unknown. This piece weaves who we are through history, where we are through time, and where we go desde aquí.
Photos: Xavier Tavera
Writing/Reflections
17 September 2022
01 December 2022
A listing of emails sharing the ideas, complications, and state of where I am in relation to my art and and this piece.
03 March 2023
01 May 2023
14 July 2023
15 August 2023
01 September 2023
Visual Artists
Outside of the dance floor I was seeing the Mexican artistic community, within the visual world. Vibrant, layered, independent. This has formed my own curiosities around its influence in dance and my relation to this world. While what lays ahead is still to solidify, I leave the trace by connecting the performance and visual worlds through “Desde Aquí”. The Mexican community is limitless. Showing a glimpse of who they during these two nights of performance is an honor.
Alondra M Garza is a Tejana/Tex-Mex artist, curator, and educator. She was born on the Mexican side of the Mexico-Texas RGV borderlands and obtained dual citizenship. Garza received an MFA at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, a BFA at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and took painting courses at the New York Academy of Art.
Her interdisciplinary artwork has been exhibited internationally across the U.S., Mexico, and Italy.
Garza is the runner of SEMILLAS, Semillas GalerÍa a non-conventional Latine gallery by being awarded the 2022 Visual Arts Fund grant through the Warhol Foundation.
Maria del Mar Villalvazo Mendoza is a creative soul who enjoys the exploration of the arts. She was born in Orizaba, Veracruz in Mexico. Currently, she resides in Saint Paul, MN. As an interdisciplinary artist, she is on a constant journey where she fulfills her recurring need for self-expression through different mediums, doing research in a diversity of materials and processes. In her work, she makes varied disciplines work together tapping into photography, sculpture, graphic design, and chemistry processes.
Learning about how to bring her artistic vision into unusual mediums is an exciting way she pushes her limits. A constant in her artistic journey has been photography, in this field she performs as a Fine Art Photographer, where she builds concepts and associations, and pairs social issues with the narrative of what she captures in her lens.
She works closely with fellow artists documenting their essence, art exhibitions, and events. She recently performed at a solo exhibition "Coexist". In this collection, she invites the observer to question the concept of duality, which alludes to the coexistence of two different characters in the same entity. By making use of contrasting concepts such as ephemeral and quotidian, she aims to reflect this duality in her own personal experience as an immigrant who coexists in this duality. One who had to embrace who she is without canceling who she was, and who she will become.
Ensemble Biographies
José A. Luis
José A. Luis was born in Veracruz, Mexico and raised in Racine, WI. He has lived in Milwaukee, Chicago, and now Minneapolis as of 2017. Relocation, returning, arrival, and departure influence his work using time and space as motifs. Dance offered him a way to communicate without words while offering interpretation to those he shared the room with. Considered a “late-dancer”, his ability to learn and unlearn in sync led him to graduate UW-Milwaukee with a BFA in 2013. Circumstances have led him to serve as both choreographer and dancer in a solo path while welcoming collaborations, residencies to reflect who he is in dance, and presentations to inform shifts in his perspectives. Determination led to his first self-produced solo show in September 2021 by threading pieces over nine years and across different cities, cementing his voice as an independent artist. The intimate, introspective, honest approach of his choreography is also present in his dancing, paving the way as a dancer in other artist’s work. José’s tenacity, skill, and acceptance in navigating the imperfectness of being human is at the forefront of who he is—in and outside the dance floor. For a thorough biography: www.jose.dance/bio
Lizzette Chapa
Lizzette Chapa (she/her) is a Mexican-American dancer and dance maker originally from The Rio Grande Valley, Texas. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BFA in Dance in 2017. She is deeply drawn to ADT’s commitment to social justice issues, radical healing, and ancestral guidance. She is a movement instructor in the Twin Cities, utilizing the principles of Yorchhā and Pilates to deepen one’s connection to self and mind body engagement. In 2020, she was a collaborator in residence led by Ananya Chatterjea at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography. She is incredibly grateful for her mentors, teachers, students, ancestors, family and, most importantly, her parents and brother for their endless support and love.
Margaret Ogas
Margaret Ogas is a dance artist based in the Twin Cities. Using an interdisciplinary approach rooted in dance and informed by Chicana cultural sensibilities, her works tell surreal everyday stories through a collage of movement, text and sound. Ogas’s choreography has been presented by the Walker Art Center, Red Eye Theater, Candy Box Dance Festival, Center for Performing Arts, Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio, and others. Margaret is a 2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow. She was a 2021 Naked Stages Fellow at Pillsbury House + Theatre and has received grant funding from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. Margaret is a core collaborator and performer with the Taja Will Ensemble and a collaborator with Aniccha Arts. She is currently a youth instructor at Young Dance. She holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities.
José A. Luis is a fiscal year 2023 recipient of a Creative Support for Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
