A look at how dancers archive and translate embodied ‘language’ and histories across culture and gender divides.

This essay explores two performances presented ten years apart: Merián Soto’s Sacude in 1999 and Victor Quijada’s Punto Ciego in 2009, viewed through the lens of Latinidad during the decade between them.

This essay challenges us to peer through the lenses of cultural appropriation, historical contextualization, and culture exchange when examining dance broadly, twentieth century dance specifically, and modern dance pioneers.

Dance, historically, has offered a portal between planes of existence, past and present, and embodied alternate realities. This essay explores this act of transcendence through works by Eiko Otake and Joanna Haigood.