APAPACHO: MIGRANT ARTS PROJECT
Apapacho is a Nahuatl word that means a gesture of care
For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples of the Anahuac have migrated and danced through ancestral territories that are now divided by an international border. The Dance of the Deer of the Yoreme people (also known as Yaqui) is found to this day in Sonora, Mexico and Arizona as a vibrant illustration of cultural resilience and connection. - Notes from SEYEWAILO RESEARCH IN MOTION by Rodrigo Esteva, MFA in Dance
As a bi-cultural (SF Bay Area/Mexico City) dance company working across borders, our artwork is embedded in ongoing creative practices of community-responsive listening and exchange in both Mexico and the US. After 25 years of dedication as DANCE MONKS (Est.1999), developing practices related to the mythologies held in the body and the land, we are now envisioning sanctuaries for creative expression and the healing arts as bridges of care between the two countries.
Currently, through Arte Migrante/ The Migrant Arts Project, our vision is inspired by decolonized Indigenous and folk practices of community organizing to incubate international spaces for gathering, creative expression, healing/care/empowerment, and dance/interdisciplinary art making focused on displaced bodies of the Mexican diaspora. As part of this project, we offer seasonal farmworkers and migrant families (in the Bay Area and San Antonio) art and culturally relevant healing services and training through our FREE program, APAPACHO. We are also planning our first Arte Migrante Summer program, an interdisciplinary arts camp free for elementary-aged children of farmworkers in partnership with Hijas del Campo, an organization dedicated to supporting Campesinx families.
Looking ahead, we envision establishing small community milpas (traditional Mexican farming plots) and Tianguis (markets) to foster economic resilience in underserved communities and multilingual migrant libraries with a focus on books in Spanish and Indigenous languages. Arte Migrante| The Migrant Arts Project returns to some of the questions that we were asking in past works, Tlaoli: People of the Corn (2016) and Breathe Here: Respira Aqui (2023) about migration, vulnerability/exploitation, cultural displacement, and amnesia, while working with the arts and traditional healing practices to spark needed change.
Arte Migrante honors immigrants' vital contributions while providing needed spaces to rest and dream, recover ancestral memory, and ignite the renewal of sacred ways of being and relating to the body and the land. During times of environmental and social crisis, it is essential to listen to the wise voices of those who have not been traditionally heard or have been overlooked and whose cultures hold vital knowledge for these times.
CALL TO ACTION
YOUR SUPPORT MAKES A DIFFERENCE
Your support is vital towards funding essential needs like providing free acupressure for farmworkers, paying teachers for our free summer arts camp, supplying books for our mobile library serving migrant families, and purchasing art supplies. It also covers rehearsal spaces and compensates artists for performances in public libraries and underserved schools in California, Texas and Oaxaca.
Join us in making a meaningful impact today.
CALENDAR & PUBLIC EVENTS
Last updated: 12/9/24
JUNE-DECEMBER, 2024: Bay Area, CA
APAPACHO: Free weekly Acupressure sessions and Workshops for local Indigenx and Latinx farmworkers at Berkeley Farmers' Market and in partnership
with Hijas del Campo
Creative Residency: Rehearsals and Embodied research, including gathering remedies and stories from local farmworkers for upcoming Performance Installation
JANUARY-MAY, 2025: Oaxaca, Mexico
Creative Residency: Research for a new interdisciplinary performance based on local remedies, farmworker stories and Mexican mythology
Workshops with curanderas of the Nuu Saavi (Mixteca), People of the Rain, and Ben 'Zaa (Zapoteca), People of the Clouds
FEBRUARY, 2025: Oaxaca, Mexico
Adivinación en Movimiento: Workshop open to the public at NECIA
MUCHAS GRACIAS TO OUR PARTNERS:
