HISTORY REPEATING
La Migra, Let's Run!
"La Migra, Let's Run" is a deeply personal solo performance that brings to life the struggles of immigrants. It explores the challenges of assimilation and cultural acculturation that often accompany the immigrant experience.
This work reflects my own journey as a Filipino immigrant in the USA, intertwining personal narratives with political themes. The fear of deportation and the potential separation from my U.S.-born Filipinx daughter inspired this solo performance. It was a direct response to the passing of SB1070, a 2010 legislative act that allowed state law enforcement officers to stop and arrest suspected undocumented immigrants. This law also required immigrants over 18 to carry a certificate of alien registration at all times, resulting in increased racial profiling and growing anti-immigration sentiments. This new awareness of U.S. laws prompted me to examine historical regulations that have perpetuated nativism in American history, such as the Naturalization Act and the Asian Exclusion Act.
Through the use of caricatures, I made bold statements portraying the stereotypes immigrants often encounter, offering insight into how white America perceives immigrants. The symbolism of a mime—an art form characterized by clowning, white makeup, and gestural storytelling—was employed to convey the erasure of the immigrant's voice and the pressure to conform to whiteness. This approach highlights how immigrants of color frequently feel compelled to assimilate into white culture for acceptance, opportunities, and even survival.
PLAY BALL
Play Ball opens with an anthem—a symbol of national pride. Catherine Fazsewski, a performer of Puerto Rican and Polish descent, sang the US national anthem, a reference to us all being inhabitants of this land. We dissected this song as the impetus for this section.
This dance theater work shows the many bureaucratic, monetary, and educational checkmarks an immigrant must pass to be deemed legal under the US government's standards, all metamorphosized by a baseball game.
As we concluded the work, we asked, "Has my Nanay achieved her American Dream?" The use of satire and bodabil, a form of comedic theater that gained popularity in the Philippines during and after the US occupation, reclaims the play to its roots in US entertainment, which is often dark and discriminatory through mockery, particularly in Vaudeville.
I created this work with an intergenerational cast, including my then 6 year old daughter. Performers came from different dance backgrounds, from a social dancer, a high schooler, a college dance major student, to a film maker interested in dance. We interviewed family on their immigration journeys as part of the process.
More Sources for Research: The Star-Spangled Banner" documentary created by students of Morgan State University.
Deportee
This work, born from an improvisational process, is deeply personal to me. As someone who was once undocumented, I did not experience deportation, but I have been detained and felt the fear of these policies.
This work was my process of empathy as I responded to the political sentiments rescinding DACA, signaling restriction and deportation on family-based immigration. U.S. immigration authorities separated more than 1,500 children from their parents at the Mexico border early in 2016. The solo work is a heartfelt dedication to mothers who are forced to never see their children ever again due to anti-immigration policies targeting groups of minorities.
In 1948, a U.S. Immigration Service plane carrying undocumented immigrants from California to Mexico crashed. All 32 people on board were killed. This tragedy inspired Woody Guthrie to write a poem titled "Plane Wreck at Los Gatos," Which later became the legendary protest song, "Deportee. "It was this powerful song, particularly the version by the acapella group Sweet Honey and the Rock, that served as the impetus for my solo work.
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Filipinos have been in Turtle island way before the European settlers arrived, Most of the West was Mexico. Yet to this day, anti-immigration sentiments towards Latinos/Hispanics are prevalent. This sentiment is sadly not new. Filipinos and Mexicans have also shared the same discrimination throughout time, and their fight for social justice in the farm labor movement is one that is often invisible in our learning of US history.
The Field Research
Every year, my daughter and I return to the Philippines and reconnect with our Panay Bukidnon cultural bearers and community. Dr. Muyco with Rennel Levilla and Anabel Castro began my curiosity about Mexican-Filipino connections when they highlighted our similarities...from their tied history to the Galleon Trades to today's immigration struggles in the US.
Malaya, my teen daughter wrote a revised script to a Suguidanon tale to suit her evolving identity as a Filipina American trying to understand her ancestral culture. We used puppetry and poetry-in-motion around a Balikbayan box (boxes often used to send US products to families in the Philippines). We create metaphors that narrate our desire to bridge home to homeland.
This workshops and residency with Multicultural Education and Counseling Through the Arts (MECA) ignited this quest for solidarity and connection between the two migrant groups, Mexican and Filipinos, after a conversation with then director, Alice Valdez on Cesar Chavez and Larry Itliong.
Field research with Panay Bukidnon bearers and our investigation of Harana, whose lineage stems from Mexico's Jarana.
LA MIGRA, LET'S RESIST (SUGOD!!!)
2024- onwards
"Sugod" is an investigation into the early migrant farm workers known as the Manongs, who maintained the practice of Kali. I incorporate the folk dances of the Philippines, which embody clandestine martial arts. This work revives a version of vaudeville that was evident in the early performances of La Migra, showcasing how indigenous Filipinos were viewed at the infamous St. Louis World Fairs. These ideas are continuing....
Sinawali
Kamayan
(Sisa to Malinche, Sinawali, Agos Y Viento, Freedom Rain Speaks)
This led to my new research with Mexican transdisciplinary artist, Carlos Castaneira, facilator of the Arts & Culture Lab. New Community-engaged works are sprouting. Here are the in-progress works, asking each other, WHERE IS HOME?
The is a seed project to a future and continuing research bridging Filipino and Mexican history, present, and futures. This work serves as a cultural bridge, weaving together socially engaged dance theater, architecture, video art, and food-sharing. In this video, you'll see behind the scenes of co-creation, set building, and intergenerational exchanges. This multiplicity metaphorically speaks to our immigrant experience of constantly adapting, shapeshifting, and seeking commonalities rather than barriers.
THE TEAM:
AniMalayaWorks
in collaboration with
Arts & Culture Lab
Carlos Castaneira
Andrew Martinez
Mark Medina
Earth Reia
Malaya Ulan
Piero Brignole
Agos Y Viento
The Manifesto written by freedom fighter, Luis Taruc, a HUKBALAHAP
(Hukbo Laban sa Mga Hapon). We are currently digging into this as research on our common histories tied to classism, and exploitation of labor in our homelands and in the US.
SISA
to
LA MALINCHE
Journal Notes:
Growing up in the Philippines, I was socialized to believe Filipinos were inferior to Americans. Like many other Filipino immigrants, it took a long time for me to come to my current place of consciousness— that being Filipino is not inferior, that my brown skin is beautiful, and that my accent isn't flawed.
As a young child, I was fluent in Tagalog, Hiligaynon, and Kinaray-a. When I transitioned from the rural town of Pototan to the city of Iloilo, I was ridiculed for speaking the 'harsh', 'unromantic', and 'primitive' language Kinaray-a, often associated with the dark-skinned, curly-haired indigenous Atis, the Indigenous people of Panay island, a lineage I come from on my mother's side. These beauty and linguistic richness, I often overlooked in the face of discrimination and societal pressures.
I attended yearly summer dance workshops with Ballet Philippines in Manila. Amongst those dance circles, I identified as Manilena (a city girl) when, in fact, I was from Iloilo. I lied about the land that raised me, ashamed of being called provincial. Growing up surrounded by rice fields, ocean, and nature was sneered at, while city living was desired.
Indeed, many Filipinos have grappled with the burden of limited notions of identity. Our collective psyche and mental well-being have been deeply scarred by generations of forced assimilation, identity loss, and colonial mentality. This struggle, often invisible to the outside world, has left a profound impact on my sense of self which I have been undoing through each choreographic work I tackle and offer to my community.
Journal Notes:
Carlos dressed me up as a Shaman, a Babaylan, a Bruja. We realized that, sadly, in our desire to connect to our ancestors, these ideas of shamanism are being mythicized, romanticized, and enigmatized today.
We are inquiring about the new age manifestations of such self-identification, Shaman. I have traced the work of Robert Bly, a poet who created the practice, the mythopoetic men's work, where men undergo a ritual utilizing Native American rituals of drumming, chanting, and sweat lodges. While the idea is a beautiful way to create men's circles, feminist critiques have stated that such secrecy does not allow conversation, creating an echo chamber and leaving no room for gender non-conformity. It was a form of mythicizing the past by people with historical attachments to it.
Another collaborator also mentions that many romanticize the idea of home and motherland, an enigmatic place, without realizing that people live in such areas, going through their own navigations. The other side of the coin is there is indeed a fear of the unknown, a demonization of the female archetype that is seen in Latino and Filipino cultures. The image of La Llorona or Sisa as outcasts parallels the villainization of the Shaman. This was experienced when I walked through public parks in Texas with this outfit and mask and was threatened by men, calling me names such as "witch" and more inappropriate names. This social experiment reminds me of Augusto Boal's Invisible Theater.