Welcome to the Jungle or A microphone is power

“In Latin America we are experts at imagining alternatives in times of turbulence.”
– Eloisa Jaramillo, Colombian artist and curator

My new interdisciplinary dance solo Welcome to the Jungle or A microphone is power draws inspiration from Latin American artists who worked within repressive environments of dictatorship, armed conflict and governmental neglect. Welcome creates a reflective and humorous space for the collective rage so many of us are experiencing in the U.S. due to the government’s current gestures towards fascism.

In order to expand my understanding of Latin American artists’ work and conditions and the political histories that shaped their contexts, I recently traveled through Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, and Colombia – countries where authoritarian regimes kidnapped, “disappeared” and murdered their own people. I also spent time in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory where inhabitants have no political representation in the federal government.  These areas and the artists living within them remind me that artmaking inside of political turbulence is nothing new. Using Karaoke, punk dance improvisation and clown work, Welcome to the Jungle or A microphone is power draws connections from these histories to the present day in ways that are kinetic and farcical.

My research began when I first visited Él Museo de la Memoria in Montevideo. This museum tells the story of the Uruguayan military dictatorship that ran from 1973 to 1985. I was struck by the parallels with Trump’s 2.0 regime – attacks on artists and arts funding, attacks on universities, the “disappearing” and killing of citizens and undocumented people, and large-scale community uprisings against these authoritarian measures. I later learned that during Pinochet’s regime in Chile, performing artists endured visits from military officers charged with sniffing out “subversive” (i.e. “leftist”) content, yet still managed to embed political messaging into their work. Puerto Rican artists maintain a vibrant experimental dance scene despite unreliable infrastructure and financial precarity.

Welcome builds from these stories and strategies. Taking on the role of the political clown, I dance to embody collective rage and frustration. I belt “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N Roses’ in Spanish. I dance to “Te Recuerdo Amanda,” a song by Chilean songwriter and theater director Victor Jara, who was tortured and assassinated in Santiago, Chile. My piece is tongue in cheek and commemorative. It exists as ritual, lecture/performance, spontaneous social choreography and cabal. In my process I will work with Silvio Lang, a queer Argentinian choreographer, as dramaturg, and American novelist and poet Lara Mimosa Montes will play the role of “writer in residence,” tracking the somatic aspects of the creative process.

Welcome to the Jungle is my way to acknowledge that we’ve been here before, we will find a way to survive, and we will continue to forge a path for those who struggle after us.