Every spring semester, Dance Repertory Theatre welcomes guest choreographers from around the world to choreograph new works, giving our dance students the opportunity to learn new choreographic methods and dance styles. Points of Intersection features pieces by two guest choreographers – American dancer, choreographer and educator Jennifer Archibald and Mexican choreographer and performing artist Claudia Lavista. We spoke with Lavista, who is visiting UT Austin as a Fulbright Scholar, and a few of her dancers about the process of collaborating on her piece Óxido (Rusty).
CLAUDIA LAVISTA (Guest Choreographer): Hello, I’m Claudia Lavista. I’m a Mexican dance maker, and I’m here with a Fulbright scholar working at the dance department at The University of Texas, and I’m very, very happy to be here.
The piece that I choreographed, it’s named Óxido, which means rusty in English. And it’s a reflection around the dynamics of power and relationship in structures that are horizontal or vertical, and how those two ways of relationship can totally, completely change the way human beings interact with each other. When we live inside of a world full of walls – for example, real walls or imaginary walls or social walls or cultural walls – there’s a lack of communication and there’s a lack of empathy, and how when these walls come down and we actually have more landscape, environment to be with each other, then love can raise and human relationships in a really nice way can come out. So the piece talks about that and I use paper as a material to express these ideas, and I’m working with nine dancers.
The way that I work always is in collaboration. And in this case, I work very closely with the dancers so that when I first come into the rehearsal, we talk a little bit about the piece and then I show them some visual materials. And then from there I invite them to start creating little like, movement phrases. And then, I kind of play with these materials, but all the movement materials from the piece are coming from the dancers. And then I’m just, I’m just like a puzzle magician. I put them together.
ELIZABETH GARZA (Performer and Dance Major): Working with a guest artist has just helped me grow so much as a performer, especially with Claudia. Day one, she had us as dancers generate movement on our own, inspired by words or ideas, and by the end of our two-week residency that we had, her genius had incorporated our movement into her vision. As a dancer’s perspective, it has really opened my eyes to how there is no right way of a process. What works for somebody, works for somebody, and in the case of Claudia, I completely loved her process every second of the way.
GIULIANA VELEZ (Performer and Dance Major): Being a third year, it’s my year to take choreography, which is a class that I take learning how to create dances and work with other people, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot from her just by watching how her mind works in rehearsal. I’ve learned in general how to behave or how to act when you are leading a group. To me, she does not make us feel like she’s above us and we are so much below her. I feel like this is a process where we’re all learning from each other and being students with each other, which I’ve genuinely appreciated.
CLAUDIA LAVISTA: Well, the best part is always work with young people. There’s so many things to learn from young students and from young dancers and creators, and I feel that this dialogue, from an artistic point of view, it’s very enriching for both me and them.
Claudia Lavista’s piece Óxido (Rusty) will be on stage among four other original works in Points of Intersection, an evening of dance performance presented by Dance Repertory Theatre, the Department of Theatre and Dance’s resident dance company.
Points of Intersection
April 4-7, 2024
B. Iden Payne Theatre
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