José: Hi, how are you? Sima: Good! José are you in Mexico or are you here?
zation that promotes economic and personal transformation and power for Latina immi- grants. Things feel so overwhelming that I don’t know what’s relevant right now. It’s relevant because I think that vulnerable populations are the hardest hit in these situations. So now we’re doing our best to try to work remotely. Monica Gonzalez: When we began working on the project and started to write things down, I thought wow! It was a total transformation. And it made me think, I really lived through a lot — and the scene really summed it up. The message of the work is that I am still alive. Maybe God didn’t want me to go to heaven yet. He was saying, “It’s not your time yet; you better speak out, tell your story.” Sima: What did the work look like before having to go remote and what does it look like now? Debby: Before it meant a lot of hanging out. Oh good, José’s here. José are you here?
she wanted me to leave — that would be ok. But I’m Mexican, so we share Latin American culture in common. And I connect with them through comedy, jokes with shared cultural references. We laugh a lot. And also, I am a man teaching dance. They were like, “Oh my god; you are so weird. You are not like the men we’re used to. You’re a dancer!” Sima: Was your sexuality explicit in this? Or was the fact that you’re a male dancer oper- ating as code? José: [Laughs.] I think they were like, “Hey, are you gay or something?” But the facilita- tors said, “We can’t give you that informa- tion.” So they were trying to be a little pro- tective. I never said I was gay but, well, you figure it out. I never came out but they were always thinking about it. Sima : It’s interesting to ponder the ways dif- ferent parts of our identities afford us access to different communities. José: I think our connection was cultural. We invited Juan Manuel Aldape and Marcelo Garzo Montalvo to teach and they were really accepted. The culture and the movement brought us together. Debby: We choose the facilitators really care- fully. And both Juan Manuel and Marcelo have that sensitivity toward the situation. That made it very safe. But in regards to José’s own sexuality, there is still homophobia in the com-
munity, so I don’t know if it would be a nega- tive thing or a positive thing, safe or less safe. Negotiating that is a little bit complicated. Sima: I was imagining that that’s what made it unspoken. Like you keep it unspoken and you let people feel comfort where they feel com- fort. Debby: Is that how you feel José? José: Sometimes. However, there are other women who are aware of the homophobia in the community and come out and say, “This is my girlfriend. I was with an abusive man for thirty years and now this is my partner.” Even for us it was like, Wow, this is so deep. I feel like there’s this polarity, some women who are homophobic and others who really confront that in a deeply fearless way. Debby: There were two queer/non-binary pro- fessional dancers in the process, and I noticed when the coming out would happen in the rehearsal process. [NAKA collaborator] Emelia [Martínez Brumbaugh] was talking to a MUA member who was telling a story about her son or nephew who might be gay, and Emelia said, “Oh I’m gay.” Just little things like that can help change the perception. Adriana Embriz: I remember it was a little difficult at first because many of the women have experienced domestic violence and sex- ual assault. José came to lead us in healing workshops and many of the women walked out when they saw him come in. They couldn’t
is the opposite, how to undrown. For them it’s basically a time to express their feelings about really intense things and cry and have the group listen. It was a process of getting to know people and then broach the idea of mov- ing and stretching, embodied practices. They love to dance. They love to do Zumba and Step. They love to move. Monica: When you experience sexual abuse you try to forget it, or rather, to freeze the memory and pretend that nothing happened. When I started to remember more, I took a workshop on sexual assault. In the third or fourth session when we talked about sexual abuse of kids, it triggered me completely and I broke down and started to cry. From that moment, I started to remember more and more and recognized that I was a survivor of sexual abuse. It was like putting the pieces of a puzzle together from all the memories. It’s very dif- ficult to live with all of this, but speaking the truth helps to heal—not to forget—but to heal. Sima: Did they have a performance element in their work at that time? Debby: They have done artistic things before. We did a show at the end of May last year that was a site-specific dance theater work in the Women’s Building in San Francisco with three NAKA dancers and women from MUA. Three women told their stories but there was a huge number of women involved. It was all in Span- ish and it was really intense. All the women
imagine that he, as a man, could lead women through a therapeutic healing process. Then we started to get to know him and what kind of work he did. He had to build trust with us so we wouldn’t make his life miserable [laughs]. Little by little, he started to win all of us over and we felt safe talking with him about many things. Thank goodness he is very charismatic, and gradually won over everyone. Now we all love him. Debby: One of the founders, Maria Jimenez said they have to start thinking more about the idea that there is this group of really strong women organizing, who all go home to their families where they have sons and husbands or partners. And sometimes it’s like this different reality for them. José: When I started to work with MUA. Maria said, “Don’t worry. It will be difficult, but we have to start to heal all members of the family.” Adriana: It’s really hard because not all are open to having men in their healing process. Many women are still very shut down because of the violence they are living with. But as the saying goes, if you don’t do something, you can’t move forward. Sima How did the collaboration start? Debby: A few years ago we started going to their domestic violence and sexual abuse sur- vivor support group. We went regularly to the meetings. They call it a desahogo . I love this word— ahogar is the word for to drown and de
José: I’m in Mexico. Debby: Are you ok? José: Yeah.
Debby: Ok. We’ve known Mujeres Unidas y Activas—MUA for short—for a long time. They’ve been involved in other [NAKA] activ- ities, like The Anastasio Project. They’ve been on panels for some of our shows. Then they invited José to come and teach some movement classes for them. That’s how the relationship got started. MUA serves Latina immigrants; they do everything from one-on-one counseling to support groups. They have groups for survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse as well as a more general support group for immigrant women who have come to this country from a variety of Latin American countries. They have English classes. They provide childcare. And they’re also really active civically. They lobby, they take trips to Sacramento. They’ve incorpo- rated arts in their curriculum previously, but our partnership with them has really grown since José started teaching them classes. And it was kind of a big deal for them to hire a man. Sima: I was wondering about that. José: At first, they were looking at me strangely. One member said she was really afraid because all her relationships with men had been horrible. I told her to let me know if
Sima: He’s connecting. Debby: Hola, hola.
Sima: Hello? Let’s make sure he’s not muted. No. It still says he’s connecting to the audio. Is he—oh! Now it says he’s connected. Hello? José: Hello?
Sima: Hey! Debby: Hi!
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n amp l i f y u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n a p l i f y
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