October 14, 2020
7:00 p.m.–8:30 p.m. EDT
Register for the event
In this artist talk, Mexican-American choreographer Victor Quijada reflects about his experience as an early Los Angeles B-Boy to Canada’s leading artist redefining breakdance and concert dance codes. Quijada will also be sharing details about his most recent, and personal, solo “Trenzado.” Built around the politics of belonging and identity, Quijada unpacks the political urgencies that motivated him to create his most personal work.
Now based in Montreal with his company RUBBERBAND, Quijada invites audiences into his creative process, sharing excerpts from his solo as well as rehearsal footage with fellow company members where traditional Mexican music is remixed and contemporary dance and hip hop vocabulary intertwine.
This audio/visual event includes an in-depth interview and Q & A with dance studies scholar Dr. Juan Manuel Aldape Muñoz (MX/US; Cornell University). This event is part of the Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers, and co-sponsored by the Department of at Cornell University.
Bios:
Victor Quijada, choreographer of RUBBERBAND DANCE GROUP (Canada/MX) was born and raised in Los Angeles. The child of Mexican parents, Victor first danced in the b-boying circles and hip-hop clubs of his native city. He performed with Rudy Perez from 1994 to 1996, then moved to New York City to join THARP! After spending three years with that company and following a stint with Ballets Tech, in 2000 he came to Montreal to join Les Grands Ballets canadiens. In 2002, he founded RUBBERBAND, throwing himself into deconstructing the choreographic principles he had learned by blending them with the raw ideology of his street dance origins. His creations – numerous short works and 14 full-length productions – are distinguished by a powerful theatricality, the energy of improvisation, and certain codes of film language, the whole sculpted with an incomparable precision of movement.
Dr. Juan Manuel Aldape Muñoz is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow (2020–2022) in the Society for the Humanities and the Department of at Cornell University. His research areas include Latinx/Latin American dance, border studies, performance theory, and gender studies. He was an Andrew W. Mellon-Chancellor’s Fellow while completing his Ph.D. in performance studies from the University of California, Berkeley. He holds an M.A. in International Performance Research from the University of Warwick (UK). He is also a choreographer originally from Mexico whose work has been presented internationally.
