PMA Assistant Professor Juan Manuel Aldape Muñoz performed a new work entitled Fugitivity on October 25-26, presented by the Dance Mission Theater. Fugitivity is the latest iteration in the performance series “Dismantling: Tactic X" convened and directed by NAKA Dance Theater co-founders Jose Ome Navarrete Mazatl and Debby Kajiyama. Aldape Muñoz devised the work in collaboration with Amelia Uzategui Bonilla, Cristina Lopez Suarez, Krhistina Giles, Music Research Strategies (Marshall Trammell), Oka Ver, Jose Ome Navarrete Mazatl and Debby Kajiyama, with video and object design by Ian Winters, and lighting design by Jose Maria Francos.
“This project, titled Fugitivity, was developed over the course of a year,” said Aldape Muñoz. “First, an invite-only residency at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) in October 2024 allowed for the initial ideas to be explored. Then, with support from the PMA Bean Fellowship, a residency at MilkBar on June 28 to July 6, 2025, allowed a reconvening of the group in a deeper exploration of the materials and the incorporation of various new media technologies. MilkBar is a center for experimental performance and media arts based in Richmond, California. The outcome of the residencies at MANCC and MilkBar was shared in a two-day public performance at Dance Mission Theater in San Francisco, California—who commissioned the work.
“Fugitivity is an experiment in the durational force of performance improvisation to challenge and shift structures of power, hierarchy and oppression. This new dance-theater work is the latest phase of a 6-year process, in which a multidisciplinary cohort of eight national and international collaborators has engaged in creative experiments, dialogues, and work-in-progress showings to instigate conversations around (il/legal) immigration, the legacy of slavery, market economies, democracy, techno-capitalism, gender, and race.
“All participating artists arrived at the creative process with questions and practices around the theme of Fugitivity. Questions we explored included: Who has lost the ability to move freely? Who is forced to flee? How can we respond creatively to xenophobia and the threat of mass deportations? What underground networks are keeping people safe? Over the course of a year, we met collectively via Zoom for two hours, every other week. Those sessions complemented the two 10-day residencies at MANCC and Milkbar. During that time, artists took turns presenting, sharing, and adapting questions and practices to craft an interdisciplinary one-hour performance.
“Originally, we had conceived that the performance was going to be structured as two performances happening simultaneously. One would be inside the DMT Blackbox on the second floor. The other was to be outside on the crowded BART Plaza (the local Bay area rapid transit system). Performers were going to move between both locations, crossing a busy public street, playing multiple technical roles and taking on different personas. It was the most technical and creative challenge to date for me. Days before our premier, President Trump’s Administration made the announcement that the National Guard and Immigration and Customs Enforcement were going to be deployed to San Francisco, with a focus on Latine immigration communities and workplaces. The deployment was proposed to take place the weekend of our performance. Dance Mission Theater is in the heart of the Mission District, a Latine immigrant enclave. Out of an abundance of precaution and to not draw attention, we forewent the public performance on the metro plaza and focused all out attention to inside the Blackbox. Some of the sections/scenes that were supposed to happen outside were moved to the theater’s foyer. That social and political tension added urgency and underscored the relevance of the topics we were addressing in Fugitivity.”
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