Rodrigo Esteva studying the Tonalpohualli | Photographer:  Mirah

RESEARCH STATEMENT

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Our movement research is focused on the intimate relationship between people and place, animism, and old-world mythology within the context of contemporary, interdisciplinary performance. We are motivated by the potency of movement to alchemize memories held in the body and the land as pathways toward personal transformation and social change. We often create site-responsive works that activate, renew, or revive spaces that have been misunderstood, discriminated against, or forgotten. 

 

This year, with the NOVO foundation's support, we have created APAPACHO working with California farmworkers and migrant/unhoused families living in shelters in Oaxaca to offer free movement and culturally relevant healing. Rodrigo has also been immersed in studying ancient codices (books) of Mexico, including the Tonalpohualli, responding to questions of how his Indigenous ancestors viewed the body, time, and space through daily study and practice. 

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In our community-responsive piece entitled Breathe Here: Respira Aqui, we designed a street installation that included a movement film of sequences explicitly designed to support public mental health during times of turbulent change that was projected onto large public buildings. It was a reminder for passersby to stop and take a break during a time when, according to the US Census Bureau, 53% of adults' mental health in the United States had been negatively impacted due to the pandemic. The piece was also a way to reclaim public spaces for creative expression, self, and mutual care in a way that reflected the diversity of the people who live there.

 

In 2020, we created Fire in the Mountain in collaboration with cinematographer Eric Koziol, exploring mythic animals, ritual running, and states of exhaustion as a way to enter transcendent states of consciousness, as seen with the Raramuri of Northern Mexico. In 2016, we made Tlaoli: People of the Corn,  asking essential questions about cultural displacement and amnesia while observing the potential of the arts to restore soul memory. In times of forced or voluntary migration, what happens to the old stories and traditions that unite people with the land? How can we, as immigrant artists, create a refuge or a fertile ground for this wisdom to grow for future generations? We traveled to Oaxaca and Mexico City to investigate corn as essential to Mexican cultural identity, the mythical relationship between people and plants, and traditional sacred farming. In 2014, we made NOMAD: The Blue Road, a site-specific ritual performance that followed the (now primarily) underground Strawberry Creek in Berkeley. In response to the California drought and water crisis around the world, we invited the audience to walk along the path of the river to remember our vital, often forgotten relationship with water. The event was also held in continuous support of the international movement to "daylight" ("bring back") rivers in urban places.