Pajarito Panel and Performance

6:00pm: Doors

6:30pm: Panel Conversation

7:30pm: Pajarito Performance

 

As part of the Living With Injury exhibition programming at MOCA, join us for an evening of conversation and performance, free and open to the public. 

The evening begins with a panel conversation between Safos Dance Theatre’s founder, Yvonne Montoya, community activist-academics Elizabeth Yee and Emily Morel, and Historian and exhibition Co-Curator Alisha Vasquez will be in conversation about using arts, academics, and community knowledge to convey contested histories. 

Following the panel, Safos dancer Madeline McDonald will perform Pajarito, including a monologue and Mujerota solo dance. Pajarito represents that cataclysmic event of dispossession and the beginning of illnesses related to radiation overexposure for nuevomexicanos. Montoya’s great-great-grandparents, Norberto and Sofia Roybal, were among over three dozen nuevomexicano families evicted from their properties at the advent of the Manhattan Project. This had major ramifications for the entire family, including two sons who were away at war and returned home hoping to work at the ranch—but instead had to leave for California to find employment. The first part of Pajarito tells the story of the violent removal of nuevomexicanos from their ranchlands.

The Mujerota solo depicts the strength that the women exhibited atop the Pajarito Plateau, both on and off the farms, especially when the military came to evict these families. This mujerota takes center stage and leaps and spins in defiant movements that are simultaneously emotional and stoic; a graceful leap is followed by hard-hitting feet on the floor in which the dancer faces the audience with a look that says “Try me.” Together, the farmers stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their imaginary implements like makeshift weapons—palas(shovels), talaches (mattocks), and hachas(axes)—emulating an archival photo of several farmers standing in the fields of Los Alamos before their displacement. They are forces with which to be reckoned. But in the end, they are removed.

Pajarito is an excerpt from Stories from Home, a multi-part performance that centers Nuevomexicana, Xicana, and Mexican American bodies, aesthetics, and experiences from the U.S. Southwest. It references the creation of the Atomic Bomb in Los Alamos, New Mexico focusing on the tragic impact the Atomic Age had on four generations of choreographer Yvonne Montoya’s family, including the loss of land and life. The Pajarito Plateau is located in Northern New Mexico. This work is an homage to the choreographer’s family who were on the Pajarito Plateau before, during, and after Oppenheimer. Exploring themes of multigenerational embodied environmental justice, an excerpt of a solo from the dance and the monologue from Pajarito will be performed at MOCA. 

 

Panelist and Artist Bios

Alisha Vasquez is a krip, Chicana mama whose Tucsonense family has occupied the unceded homelands of the Tohono O’odham, Apache, and Yoeme people for six generations. Vasquez holds a BA in History and Women’s Studies from the University of Arizona and MA from San Francisco State University where her graduate work examined the rise neoliberal capitalism alongside multiple social movements in the United States, emphasizing disabled and Chicanx intersectional material realities. She taught middle school, high school, and college using these positions to resource the community. She is currently the Disability Justice Folklorist at Southwest Folklife Alliance; co-director of the Mexican American Heritage and History Museum in Tucson; and Director of the UC Berkeley Disabled Ecologies Tucson Satellite. She honors her Mexican American-Tucsonense family, punk rock, living disabled, an acceptance and rejection of the academy, and existing within community as the epochs of her education until becoming a parent

Emily Morel is a proud first generation American and Afro-Latina of Dominican and Mexican roots who was raised in the City of South Tucson. She holds a BA in Latin American Studies and Environmental Studies with a minor in Spanish from the University of Arizona. She is currently in a dual degree MA program in Latin American Studies and Public Health with a concentration on Climate Change and its impact at the University of Arizona. She is the president of the University of Arizona’s Latin American Studies Student Organization and teaches Spanish as a graduate instructor to undergraduate students. She is interested in the intersections of reproductive justice, environmental justice, abolition, health and Latin America, specifically connections to colonial history, resistance and how it relates to our current socio-political climate. Her experience in these fields includes her time at El Rio’s Reproductive Health Access Project as a youth peer sex educator and her work as the community outreach at Tucson Bail Fund. For the past 4 years Emily has been the lead organizer of Earth Day for the Hood, a grassroots event that highlights and celebrates resistance against environmental racism in South Tucson. She now serves as a key volunteer offering support to families in and out of the immigration system for Tucson’s participatory defense hub, Red de DefensAZ.

Eli Yee is originally from the border town of Yuma, AZ. She is a proud daughter and granddaughter of Mexican immigrants. She has lived in Southside, Tucson, for the past 6 years and received her Bachelor of Science in psychology at the University of Arizona. She is a current doctoral student in social psychology at the University of Arizona. For the past several years, and currently, she works to integrate critical theory and social justice in her research. This includes working on various projects on environmental racism, particularly the psychological outcomes of Southsiders who experienced historical water contamination. Working with different community organizers, city officials, and researchers, she has worked to bring impactful changes to those harmed by the historical water contamination. She also researches collective action and attitudes towards immigrants and immigration policy in an effort to have meaningful impacts on local/state policy.

Yvonne Montoya is a mother, dancemaker, bi-national artist, and founding director of Safos Dance Theatre. Based in Tucson, A.Z. and originally from Albuquerque, N.M., her work is grounded in and inspired by the landscapes, languages, cultures, and aesthetics of the U.S. Southwest. Montoya is the founder and co-organizer for Dance in the Desert: A Gathering of Latinx Dancemakers. She was a 2021 PlainView Fellow, a 2019-2020 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow, a 2019-2020 Dance/USA Artist Fellow, a recipient of the 2020 MAP Fund, and the first Arizona-based artist to receive the 2020 New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) National Dance Project Production Grant. In 2022, her company Safos Dance Theatre received the National Performance Network Creation Fund Grant and the National Endowment for the Arts Grants for Arts Project Grant for her piece Stories From Home.  She was also featured in KQED’s If Cities Could Dance and KNME’s ¡COLORES!. www.yvonnemontoya.co

Madeline McDonald is a dedicated dancer, choreographer, teacher, and artist based in Phoenix, Arizona. She began her dance training at the age of 18 at Scottsdale Community College (SCC).Currently, Madeline is the Creative Department Team Lead for Relentless Beats, and performs as a dancer and stilt walker with their Weird and Wonderful crew. A former dancer with Canyon Movement Company in Flagstaff, Instinct Dance Corps at SCC, and Align Dance in Scottsdale, Madeline currently dances with Rosenkrans Dance and Safos Dance Theatre.

About Safos Dance Theatre

Yvonne Montoya (Nuevomexicana/Chicana) and Michele Orduña (Tohono O’Odham) founded Safos Dance Theatre in Tucson, AZ 2009 to serve and support Mexican American, Chicana, and Latina/e artists in contemporary dance in Tucson and Arizona. Safos Dance Theatre currently fulfills its mission through the following programs and projects: Stories from Home, Dance in the Desert, and Las Fronterizas. The name Safos is based on José Antonio Burciaga’s description of “Con Safos” in the book Drink Cultura: Chicanismo.

Creative Team:

Music Composer: Samuel Peña
Costume Design: Mary Leopo
Digital Animator: Wesley Creigh

 

This event is supported by the UC Berkeley Disabled Ecologies Lab, Tucson, Southwest Folklife Alliance, Los Descendientes de Tucson, and MOCA Tucson’s Board of Trustees and Members.

Stories from Home has been in development for many years. The following funders, organizations, people, and artist residencies supported the creation of this work over the years. The presentation was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This project is also supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities visit www.arts.gov. This project is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by SU TEATRO, GALA Hispanic Theatre, and NPN. The Creation & Development Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). For more information visit www.npnweb.org. This project is supported in part by the MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona; Projecting All Voices, a program of Arizona State University Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, and Arizona State University Gammage. This project was developed as a part of the Kennedy Center Office Hours Page to Stage Residency program at the REACH. This project was created with support from SPACE on Ryder Farm http://www.spaceonryderfarm.org, Keshet Makers Space Experience, Dance/USA Fellowships to Artists, Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellowship 2019/2020, and Safos Dance Theatre. This project is also supported in part by the Arizona Commission on the Arts which receives support from the State of Arizona and the National Endowment for the Arts. This project is supported in part by the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures through a grant from the NALAC Fund for the Arts. Safos Dance Theatre is supported in part by an American Rescue Plan Act grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support general operating expenses in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.