UC San Diego

The ambiguous fortress mentality fed by the US/Mexico boundary impedes many who would rather build bridges. Not me, I showed up in La Jolla armed with the expressive rhythmic patterns animating the forms of dance that I have cultivated for more than a decade, ready to coalesce. Little did I suspect that this journey would culminate back at the estuary that stops at the Ocean and weaves in and out of the contours of such concrete and metal mesh. I embarked on the scope discussed here with one hand on a bundle of questions as my rudder while the other one sensed forward listening and propelling me, as if the dynamic forms of this movement constituted a living process, all by itself. My research became a solo journey since everyone around me disappeared from public space. The enactment of “meaning” discussed in these descriptions of my work did not emerge from the expressivity of the participant’s dance but from the intention to provide ever more accessible scaffolding where our edges could dissolve. I seized the academic scope of this effort with a conviction to avoid being reduced to a manifesto that could easily be pegged. My agency here did not draw its main potency from the machinations of doing work or making something dazzling to be put on a shelf. I came as a cultural worker to see about activating something in the “body politique” that keeps so many at the arbitrary disposal of so few. As I embodied philosophical questions that sand, concrete, chollas, river contours and human remnants asked me there, I realized that the dynamic relations between all material elements involved in my dance produced an “of the moment” sense. I discovered that such relations offered an expressive rhythmic pattern. Now, your movement is the vigilante listening with all your being for intruders' steps and now you are the prey’s spirit fleeting without leaving a trace. When others joined me there our forms of dance were continuous. They were more than one movement or sensual feeling at a time. The relations of varied dynamics offered a new expressive force.