Performing Queer Latinidad: Dance, Sexuality, Politics

Acknowledgments

acknowledgments Performing Queer Latinidad is a project written in travel throughout the United States during the 1990s and into the early 2000s. I first ventured into this research as a doctoral student in theater at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and then at the University of Texas at Austin. I continued fieldwork and archival research while on the faculty ranks at Arizona State University and Northwestern University. Critical support for this project was provided by fellowships and grants from the Ford Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Herberger College of Fine Arts at Arizona State University, and the School of Communication at Northwestern University. The preparation and publication of this manuscript is made possible in part by a publication subvention grant from Northwestern University. Across the terrain I have encountered an incredibly generous, creative , and inspirational community of artists, scholars, activists, and friends who have become my extended family. This project would have been impossible without their presence in my life. Arthur Aviles welcomed me to Hunts Point with open arms and generously shared with me his passion for the neighborhood and his faith in how the arts could help this embattled but resilient pocket of creativity feel like home. His artistic work and his vision for the role the arts could play in his community inspired me in the first place to pursue the research that became this book. I thank Charles Rice-González, Elizabeth Marrero, Jorge Merced, and the many fierce dancers, performers, and teatreros who have graced the stages of BAAD!, the Point, Pregones, and many other gathering spaces in the Bronx with deliciously queer humor and intelligence. A little bit farther south, between Loisaida and Fourteenth Street, I came to know a world of art practice and queer community that sustains viii acknowledgments me to this day. Among the many artists that populated my experience of the Lower East Side, Alina Troyano and Marga Gómez articulate for me the politics of pleasure and laughter. In 1999, the good people of the Esperanza Center, especially Graciela Sánchez, opened the doors of their cultural center. They allowed me access to their extensive archives, introduced me to key collaborators in their struggle to protect their funding and their dignity, and taught me that feminist and queer politics and Latina/o politics can coexist in creative friction. Esperanza staff and volunteers, especially Antonia Casta- ñeda, Virginia Grise, Peter Haney, Amy Keastly, Herminia Maldonado, René Saenz, and Manuel Solis, were generous with their time and stories. Their conviction and enthusiasm made hope for justice palpable, even possible. I thank Adrián, Clara, Gerry, Gina, Héctor, José, Josué, Juan, Lena, Linda, Luis, Marisa, Michael, Néstor, Nilda, Rosalinda, Tomás, Yadira, Victor, Wilbert, William, and the many other club patrons, dancers, bartenders, bouncers, promoters, and performers I have talked to and danced with in New York, Rochester, San Antonio, Austin, Phoenix, and Chicago over the past two decades. I am especially grateful for those who agreed to participate in this study. You have not only taught me a step or two on the dance floor but have transformed my life with your comradeship and creativity. I am fortunate to have worked with an incredible group of mentors throughout my academic career. At the University of Rochester, Michael Ann Holly, Douglas Crimp, Claudia Schaefer, and Sharon Willis offered a strong foundation from which to build my scholarly, artistic and political interests. Allen Topolski taught me how to integrate theory and practice in the arts. Lisa Cartwright introduced me to the field of performance studies and offered critical early encouragement and guidance. Rosemary Feal challenged me to think interartistically and interdisciplinarily and was an enthusiastic endorser of my venture into a scholarly career. Ondine Chavoya, Tina Takemoto, Karen Kosasa, Tarek El-Ariss, and Briget R. Cooks served as role models and allies. Rishad Lawyer and William Estuardo Rosales became my brothers, Jessica Gerrity my sister. Garth Fagan, Norwood Pennewell, Steve Humphrey, Bit Knighton , Natalie Rogers-Cropper, Valentina Alexander, Christopher Morrison , Lavert Benefield, Sharlene Shu, Sharon Skepple, and the rest of the dancers at Garth Fagan Dance became and continue to be my dance family. At the City University of New York, Marvin Carlson, Jane Bow- acknowledgments ix ers, and Eve Kosofsky-Sedgwick were transformative pedagogues who pushed my engagements with performance. At the University of Texas at Austin, Ann Daly, Stacy Wolf, Charlotte...