This first-of-its-kind book brings together writing by artists and scholars to survey the lively field of Puerto Rican experimental dance across four decades. Originally published as Habitar lo Imposible, the translation in English features essays, artist statements, and interviews plus more than 100 photos of productions, programs, posters, and scores. Throughout, Inhabiting the Impossible provides fresh, invaluable perspectives on experimentation in dance as a sustained practice that has from the start deeply engaged issues of race, gender, sexuality, and politics. The book is also enhanced by a bibliographic section with detailed resources for further study.
Artists and scholars celebrate the development, diversity, and ethics of Puerto Rican experimental dance
Recenzijas
Enters into current conversations about the connections between corporealities, choreography, dance, geopolitics, identity construction and ideas of nation, race, gender, class and sexuality, political agency and artistic practices--and the circulation of these concepts in the Americas. The book will interest scholars, students, practitioners and those interested in Latin American cultural theory, aesthetics, political studies, anthropology, or gender and sexuality studies. This history of experimental dance in Puerto Rico also serves as a model for understanding the aesthetic impacts of dance within particular cultural and political contexts. Further, it foregrounds the voices of artists as it narrates the importance of dance as a mode of cultural manifestation, whether on the street, in living rooms and kitchens, within ritual sites, in abandoned, repurposed spaces, or on concert stages. "Inhabiting the Impossible is a critical addition to the canon of Puerto Rican studies, expanding both how and what we understand as comprising its terrain. It insistently and artfully introduces readers to Puerto Ricans who have given their lives to making the archipelago through dance, demonstrating how dance itself is a powerful register for historical accounting." * Centro Journal *
Preface to the English Edition
Susan Homar and nibia pastrana santiago
Introduction: Inhabiting Dance in Puerto Rico
Part I. Histories, Bodies, and Alterities
Susan Homar
Clear the Way, Were Coming Through! Forging a New Dance Field in Puerto
Rico
Adriana Garriga-López
Insurrectionary Bodies: Performance at the Borderlands of Governability and
Regeneration
nibia pastrana santiago
against erasure, in favor of strangeness, and remember: this choreography is
not a Caribbean myth, others came before it
Part II. Considerations about, from, and with Dance
Alma Concepción Suįrez
The Legacy of Gilda Navarra and the Taller de Histriones
Teresa Peńa Jordįn
Transforming the Gaze: Moving Beyond Boundaries with Poetry, Testimony, and
Dance
Translated by Sarah Yates Gibson
Nelson Rivera
Puerto Rico: Four Encounters Linking Dance, Music, and the Visual Arts
Part III. Decolonial Tasks: Improvisations, Performances, and Events
Lydia Platón Lįzaro
The Possible from the Unknown: Transformations in the Present-Present of
Improvisation
Arnaldo Rodrķguez Bagué
Curating the Foro Permanente de Performance, FPP
Ramón H. Rivera-Servera
Moving Queer Feminist Movements in the Commons or How Puerto Rico Dances
its Decolonial Desires
Part IV. To Inhabit, to Write, to Move
Alicia Dķaz Concepción
Oscar Mestey Villamil
Ńequi Gonzįlez Martķnez
teresa hernįndez
Jesśs Miranda Santiago (Pito)
Awilda Rodrķguez Lora
Jeanne dArc Casas Panouze
Javier Cardona Otero
Noemķ Segarra Ramķrez
Karen Langevin
Pepe Įlvarez Colón
Part V. MAPA: Originary Cartographies--Interviews
Alejandra Martorell
Mapping Puerto Rico: Coordinates of Five Explorers of Dance as Performance
Interviews with:
Petra Bravo (Hernįndez)
Meriįn Soto
Myrna Renaud
Awilda Sterling-Duprey
Viveca Vįzquez
Sonia Daubón Aquino
Guide to Informational and Bibliographic Resources on Experimental Dance in
Puerto Rico
Notes on Collaborators
Dance scholar Susan Homar was, until her retirement, a professor at Universidad de Puerto Rico. nibia pastrana santiago is an artist and choreographer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
