Frontera I Border- A living monument

Endangered Human Movements Vol. 4

WORKS

Tras, tras, tras… traca, traca, tras, tras.

Traca, traca, tras, tras.

Tras, tras.

 

That is how the dance begins…

Rodrigo de la Torre

 

“He told me: Prepare for tomorrow, we will cross the border. To cross at the first try is not far from a dream. After the slope, walk with great care, the way to the other side is plagued with snakes”

                                                                                                                                                                 Popular “corrido” song, author unknown

The piece corresponds to the fourth volume of the research on “Endangered Human Movements” *,a long-term research carried out by choreographer Amanda Piña on the current loss of planetary bio-cultural diversity.

Rooted in an ancient pre-Hispanic dance form that historically meets a “Danza de Conquista”, ( a Conquest Dance), re -enacting the battles in Europe between Mors and Christians, implemented by the Spanish Crown, (Casa Austria /Habsburg) to develop the conquest of Mexico.

This old dance is practiced and actualized again during the 1990’s  by a group of youngsters from Matamoros, Tamaulipas ( MX) at the border between Mexico and the U.S. Led by dance leader Rodrigo de la Torre, the dance is practiced today, in a context where extreme violence, narco traffic, militarization, and cheap labor industries meet.

If race is a mark carried on a body of a certain position in History, to unsettle the hegemony of that history is central to the development of this work which looks at “traditional” dance as a repertoire of inscriptions where many narrations intertwine, encoding a continues movement of resistance to all forms of oppression and dispossession.

Frontera I Border, proposes a living monument, a monumental dance, as a homage to the power and resilience of those whose bodies carry borders,  to those who dear to cross.

 

* Endangered Human Movements is the title of a long-term project, started in the year 2014, focusing on human movement practices, which have been cultivated for centuries all over the world. Inside this frame a series of performances, workshops, installations, publications and a comprehensive online archive are developed which reconstruct, re-contextualize and re signify human movement practices in danger of disappearing, aiming at unleashing their future potential.