PMA Assistant Professor Juan Manuel Aldape Muñoz has published an academic article called “Choreographing Deportation in David Herrera's TOUCH” in Dance Research Journal, a top journal in dance and performance studies. The article examines performances treating the topic of deportation.
Aldape Muñoz’s article appears here through Cambridge University Press.
Aldape Muñoz spoke with us about this publication:
What brought you to David Herrera’s TOUCH?
I first saw this performance in my then volunteer capacity with the Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers in San Francisco in 2015. It detonated a set of unexpected questions and feelings as it treated the topic of immigration enforcement and deportation directly through dance (a rare thing), but it also did it in a way that made me question the ethical approach to the work’s creative process. The performance was crafted using Story Circle methodology with immigrants who were not included in the final performance. The unsettling feeling of unease did not go away. I chose to pursue it when I began to write the article in 2021. The article is a modified version of a chapter from my book manuscript The Alien Commons: Choreography and Performance Beyond Citizenship.
What was your approach in crafting this article?
At first, I was hesitant to develop it because I disagreed with, or was concerned about, some representational elements in the production when I first saw it. However, part of our responsibility as performance and dance studies scholars is to work through the muck of uncomfortable feelings produced through artistic expressions. I crafted the publication by spending a significant amount of time (2 years) closely breaking down the performance: identifying visual, movement, and sonic motifs; understanding its structure (e.g., time intervals between the different sections and what happened in the foyer before and after the performance); situating it alongside of, and comparing it to, other artistic projects treating the topic of deportation; and appraising how the performance reshaped common immigration discourse. The article came together after I conducted close readings of the archived performance, presented excerpts of my interpretation of it at different conferences, and interviewed choreographer David Herrera. The result was a closer relationship with the choreographer, and a testament to the generative potential in accepting the hesitancy and unease produced in artistic encounters and including them as part of the writing. Those feelings also tell a story linked to bigger social processes. It is important to listen to them.
What would you like readers to know about your work?
I would like readers to take away the indispensable role that dance and choreography (as a site and method of analysis) can play in teaching us about what it means to cohabitate across difference, especially legal difference.
Read more about Aldape Muñoz’s work.
