La Danza de los Espejos (The Dance of Mirrors)
2003
Naturalizations Series (Serie Naturalizaciones), Begun 2002
Digital video, color, sound. Duration 3min.
Edition of 12 (DVD)
Shown on monitor or as wall projection installation loop
Selection of stills from the digital video
Collections: Gilberto Cárdenas Collection, Notre Dame, IN (#3 of 12)
In collaboration with:
Ballet Teopochtli
Experimental Program Art, Story-Telling, and the Five Senses
Encontrando Nuestras Raíces Afterschool Program
Mexicanos Unidos de Queens
Asociación Tepeyac de New York
With additional support from Dedalus Foundation
This short video is an artwork in its own terms, which also documents
an experimental dance with over 60 children wearing mirror-masks in
Queens, NY. The piece has a soundtrack co-produced by the children,
in which they engaged in stages of media production from which they
are usually excluded and reflect the surveillance under which they live.
The work has clear connections with the centrality of folkloric ballet in
immigrant communities. It may be called an avant-garde folkloric ballet
of the 21st Century.