VII. I’ve been taking a class called Living Systems with an instructor named Leah Garza who offers many spiritual support systems including Akashic Readings. The course is about examining one’s conditioning, unpacking uni- versal laws, and pulling apart the systemic oppressive layers that bind us to this reality and one another. As part of the course, Leah integrates guest speakers and one of them was a Central American curanderx named Koyote the Blind. Towards the end of his lecture, Koy- ote asked our class to introduce ourselves without any of the accolades or identity markers we would usually include. [So my initial response was going to be, “Hi, my name is Estrellx Supernova, I prefer they/them pronouns and these pronouns are non-negotiable. I’m currently living on unceded Tongva territories aka Los Angeles. I am the Cosmic Energetic Orchestrator / Founder of an ecosystem called The Cosmic Angels / The School(s) of Tenderness and am also a choreographer, writer, performer, healer, curator. Most recently, I was awarded a 2020 Creative Capital Grant for a proj- ect titled EncuentrX 33: Queer Neurocognitive Archi- tectures Hidden in Plain Site(s) whose timeline I will be stepping into soon. A challenge I have been fac- ing lately has been the perpetual feeling of exhaus- tion coming from the collective energy along with the puzzle I’ve been trying to crack around my material health and abundance. Something I want to celebrate is having pulled off the first IRL healing-based art- ist residency I designed called Residencias Rhizomat- ica (w/ the support of many thought partners includ- ing Tossie Long, Megan Kendzior, and Marýa Wethers amongst others) in LA this past January/February. I trusted my gut to follow-through with the IRL vision even in the midst of COVID-19 and trusted the cohort and I would be protected. The cohort who gathered around and felt called in by the theme of inhabiting paradox have become a new expression of home for me. Because of them, I feel more empowered to open my heart, heal my relationship to collaboration, and trust in my capacity to facilitate, communicate, and hold space. The feedback I’ve been receiving has left me feeling in awe, with a heart full of gratitude, that the work I am putting out into the world is needed even in the moments when it has felt like no one is lis- tening. I want to be in this rhizomatic world more and more consistently and unapologetically. This is what I’m co-creating daily. I know another way of being is
• The Holy Spirit;
possible and it requires resources, collaboration, and active divestment from limiting beliefs on all levels, in all dimensions, right here, right now. I am co-creating a space and reality where Black, Indigenous, Queer, Trans, Allied Creatives get to come together to com- mune, dance, express ourselves on our own terms, inviting in a perpetual state of liberatory and erotic energetics into the center of our hearts. I wish to do this without becoming a martyr, without forgetting my own needs, without making myself small because there is space for all of us simultaneously.”] [The Koyote version, “I was looking up at the stars one evening and became so moved. Without a doubt in my mind, I could sense that my true home was up there in the cosmos. I texted my friend and told them this and they texted me back with a smiling emoji. ‘And so it is…That is your home,’ they said. I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking that I was broken, frag- mented, irreparable because of the trauma I experi- enced as a child AND because the U.S. never felt like home nor did Guatemala. Now I’m aware that this belief actually benefits the colonial powers, which is shifting something in me. I realize that the medicine of my Ancestors, their presence, blessings, magic is in my DNA, bones, imprinted into me through each inhale and exhale I make therefore I am never disconnected. Even if they kill me, this wisdom and medicinal pat- tern will move forward into my next manifestation. My Spirit remains untouchable. I am understanding more and more that there are multiple Diasporic lin- eages that weave through me and I can tap into this
felt like warm flashes of joy and iridescent waterfalls moving through my body. Welcome Home! Welcome Home! I had finally arrived. When I was in Amsterdam this past fall, I asked the Universe for guidance on whether I was meant to stay in the EU or shift elsewhere and like a bolt of light- ning Tongva/Los Angeles came through…again. What is it about this landmass that calls me back? What needs to complete itself here in the state of Califor- nia? Is it my process of rebirth? The West is the site of Death, where the sun sets.
• The Dance Floor Make-Out;
I picked up the phone and texted my mother, “I don’t go by that name anymore. Mi nombre es Estrellx. Si quieres que nuestra relación y amistad sigan creci- endo va ser muy importante que integres esto,”
“Ok esta bien. Que pases un lindo día.”
They don’t understand. They’re from another gener- ation, another timezone, another planet. And grace, offer them grace.
I bring my body to a stillness, with my ear to the ground, listening to what the land has to share with me.
“Tienes que saber que va a tomar tiempo… poco a poco.”
The Earth whispers, “Each of us is specifically designed to activate specific places on the planet. Your mission is to carry forward the frequency of the new paradigm through everything that you do, which is rooted in unconditional love. Your purpose is to be and be free and feel free to move as often as you need. To play, simmer in pleasure, and move towards your full body YES.” We are either gently moved towards or forced to shift into these locations. The Tower Card is always present with its tough love energy that is guiding us ever so swiftly towards Death and The Star combined. What needs to die in order for you to be reborn? Name it. And let it go. No matter what, we are imbued with agency and power to make
“Yo entiendo.”
It’s interesting how somatically impacted I feel when folks accidentally use my dead name. On some days it doesn’t matter and on other days a shudder runs through my spine in acknowledgment that the phase constituted by Randy Reyes has passed. Conversely, the shudder also signifies that I am becoming aligned with a new identity and frequency. The frequency of Estrellx Supernova is asking me to change and show up for myself each and every day, especially when old patterns rear their heads and jump to the surface not wanting to let me move forward. A new name, like giving a work a title that aligns with your cho- reographic vision, is a humble announcement of all the work it has taken to bring the project to fruition. Estrellx is my present-future self and acknowledges the insurmountable loss I have had to move through, the reclamation of my inner child, the tectonic shifts within my own healing journey that brought me back home to myself, to this primary relationship that I had neglected for such a long time. And now that I am in relation to myself again, the work is now about letting others into my sacred space. Estrellx is challenging me to release patterns and narratives that are no longer serving me, including not taking myself too seriously, releasing mutual exclusivity (I can be both spiritual and sexual-erotic), to be okay with get- ting messy, awkward, as I ask for what I need. This work is daily, subtle, and incremental. The process of edging towards myself is an erotic process in and of itself and is requiring a disentanglement from who I thought I was.
When I arrived on Tongva territory for the first time, I was immediately energetically embraced by the land.
multiplicity and create home anywhere I go, anywhere I am called to. Everywhere I go I thrive. Home is emer- gent, nomadic, effervescent and I experience it in the smiles of strangers, in colors and lighting, in the way food is made with love.”] VIII. When I arrived on Tongva territory for the first time, I was immediately energetically embraced by the land. I had never experienced anything like this before. It
choices that bring us into and out of states of align- ment, disorientation, and timelines. Getting lost and delayed are inherent to the process and master plan. Choices that bend possibilities and potentialities in and out of focus. So how do we create home and stability in the midst of so much cataclysmic transformation? How do we create stability when climate crisis, multiple pandemics, and an impending war continue to threaten any notion of stability? What is the direction I / we can always move towards that will never lead me / us astray? How can we think short- and long-term at the same time?
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
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