A Critical Race Feminist Analysis of Dar a Luz and Censura: A Danced Rearticulation of Bordered Mexicanidad

Through a critical race theory (CRT) lens, this paper examines the rationale and impact of Dar a Luz and Censura, two dance works from my thesis concert that consider the power and danger present at the intersections of race, gender, and nation in Latinx bodies in relation to the racist, imperialist US-Mexico border. The audience sits in the round, serving as a border encircling the dancers. An authority figure polices it, monitoring the brown bodies inside that get close to the border's edge. Inside the liminal border space, dancers draw attention to the ceaseless violence that women undergo that is exacerbated by the bordered space, and reclaim their bodies and rearticulate their relationship to colonial power. I use Kimberlé Crenshaw's work on intersectionality to interrogate how my choreographic choices speak to Chicana identities in bordered geographies, Tribal CRT to investigate how and why savagism informs these works, and Latin critical race feminism to deeply analyze the Chicana-based cultural, social, and political themes that contribute to the greater structure of the pieces and their aesthetics. Finally, I discuss how these dances serve as a mode of CRT praxis and why performance is a valuable ingredient to CRT discourse.