BROWN BABY

Brown Baby takes an approach to both content and form by positioning Latinx embodiment, expression, and experience as a primary site of knowledge-making rather than a subject to be translated into existing contemporary dance frameworks. Drawing from scholars such as Dr. Cuellar, Dr. Aldape, Najera-Ramirez, and Neyra, the company and its research responds to the absence of a codified Chicanx (Latinx) movement language by developing from I call Contemporary Sabor. It is a practice rooted in prioritizing expression that draws from collective experiementation of what was not learned in institutions and invites social dance and lived experience.

 

Brown Baby utilizes my motion memoir methodology, where performers generate movement through personal and collective histories, disrupting hierarchical choreographic authorship. The work engages ideas of Brownness, citizenship, and belonging, reframing the body as a politicized and archive that resists Eurocentric structures, offering instead a fluid, community-centered performance model grounded in cultural inheritance and experimentation.

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My work is shaped by collaboration with Latinx artists who, like myself, have been trained within Eurocentric frameworks yet are actively thinking about and working to reclaim agency. I question how U.S. cultural systems have molded our bodies and aesthetics, especially in a moment when dominant narratives continue to position Latinx communities as problematic or expendable. This collective inquiry directly informs Brown Baby, building on my ongoing practice of motion memoirs and Contemporary Sabor, where personal and cultural histories generate movement.