Dancing Cultural Memory: Three Contemporary Choreographies Informed by a Migrant Embodiment of "Home"

This paper analyzes how memory is performed through the creation of three contemporary dance-based choreographies: Lejania (Distant), Memory Lane and ImShift. Influenced by Afro-Venezuelan movement and contemporary dance, I explore specific locations where memory is stored in the body. All three choreographic case studies have pronounced motifs of white cloth, partial nudity, shadows and percussive rhythms. This analysis spring boards from leading scholars that write about issues of embodiment, cultural memory and diasporic performance such as Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Diana Taylor, Coco Fusco and Gloria Anzaldua. The dynamic movement vocabulary creates a body bilingualism that draws from the dancers’ personal lives and each author’s issues of living in the margins of mainstream society, belonging and challenging Latin American immigrant stereotypes. This paper examines the historical knowledge and shared sense of identity that is embodied and expressed in the performances.