Choreotopias: Performance, State Violence, and the Near Past By Juan Manuel Aldape Muñoz A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Performance Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor SanSan Kwan, Chair Professor Juana María Rodríguez Professor Ivonne del Valle Spring 2020 Copyright Juan Manuel Aldape Muñoz All Rights Reserved, 2020 Abstract Choreotopias: Performance, State Violence, and the Near Past by Juan Manuel Aldape Muñoz Doctor of Philosophy in Performance Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor SanSan Kwan, Chair Choreotopias: Performance, State Violence, and the Near Past uncovers the central role of dance in producing new social and political relationships in México since the 1980s. In the process it considers how performances have worked historically and aesthetically in violent contexts. The 1980s marked an inflection point in the social life of residents in México. A contested presidential election, a deadly earthquake, a receding economy, a changing middle-class, and gender and sexuality political movements created unprecedented conditions. This project uses elements of choreography as metaphoric possibilities for understanding political organization. It highlights under analyzed artists and it explores how corruption and misuse of power shape dance and performance makers and, in turn, how these artists respond to such conditions. I describe the collective communities that use artistic interventions in zones where the State actively works to restrict political organization. Choreotopias foregrounds three main sites where artists contest national projects that control bodies and their actions, even in death. I assess creative practices such as experimental street choreography in the 1980s, collaborations between feminist video artists and punk youth in the late-1980s and 1990s, and dance theatre processes where artists have used forensic science aesthetics since the 1990s. Artists are attuned to the embodied dimensions of history, representative governments, and the national imaginary. Across these visual and embodied forms of expression, artists reveal the limits of the State and, in some cases, offer visions of a better world. Performance studies links gender studies and nationalism studies to construct compelling arguments about the importance of video art, dance, and theater in creating collective communities under the threat of abusive power. This project combines a mix of feminism studies, political philosophy, queer of color critique, performance analysis, and nationalism studies to consider how artists use dance and the choreography of waste to refuse control societies. This interdisciplinary study stresses the importance of creative practices in offering new ways of political formation. Chapter One, "From Heterotopias to Choreotopias: Dance and Desmadre in Mexico City," examines the punk-aesthetic choreographies created by Asaltodiario, a Mexico City theater and dance troupe formed in 1987. I assess the relationship between choreography and precarity in times of rapid urban development after a deadly earthquake sped up citywide renovation plans. Reassessing Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopias, I argue that choreographic practices offered an interconnectedness that had been ruptured by the structural collapse of the city and the 1 State. I assess Asaltodiario's commitment to valuing the public street as a site on which to change urban life in Mexico City. The artists collaborated with homeless youth and drug addicts. Performances by Asaltodiario followed a then-recent trend in Mexican contemporary dance practices not seen in the cultural sector before the 1980s. I offer the concept I provisionally call choreotopias, or those temporary and spatially bounded "dance floors" that occur in unexpected places. Choreotopias are artistic-political dwelling spaces that rearrange social relationships and create temporary communities, anticipate new social imaginaries, and attend to the historic, present, and future lives of unwanted bodies. The subsequent chapters consider the notion of choreotopias in relationship to gender and death. Chapter Two, "Mosh Pit Desires: Video Feminisms and Punk Performances," examines how disaffected women who are associated with counterculture movements at the end of the twentieth century navigate México's culture of repression. I evaluate the video art projects Nadie es inocente (1986) and Alma punk (1992), created by feminist artist Sarah Minter in collaboration with disaffected youth from the punk rock commons. I analyze Minter's approach to video art and its intersection with punk's multi-sensory and "genre-punking" aspects. The performers all played themselves in these documentary-fiction projects. The content and form of the materials exceeded morally and aesthetically conservative campaigns that attempted to control how women's bodies could move. The final chapter, "Searching for the Missing: Performance, Forensics, and Democracy" offers a compelling analysis of the relationship between performance and forensic practices through an evaluation of artists such as NAKA Dance Theater, Violeta Luna, and Lukas Avendaño. These artists have used visual representations of death, official reports from missing persons' cases, and medical-legal methods to develop their performances. I maintain that the artists use dance and performance investigative aesthetics for public criticism in violent contexts without encumbering the liabilities of journalism—a discipline that became a deadly practice. This project will be of interest to scholars and students in gender studies, nationalism studies, urban studies, performance studies, and Latinx/Latin American Studies. 2 To María de los Angeles, Angel, Melissa, and Caim Sequoia, María y Angel me dieron la vida, dejaron todo para un mundo mejor, Melissa and Caim are that new world. i Table of Contents List of Figures .............................................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... vi Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: Dance and Desmadre in Mexico City .................................................................... 24 Chapter Two: Mosh Pit Desires ................................................................................................... 49 Chapter Three: Searching for the Missing ................................................................................... 77 Conclusion: The State of Performance ........................................................................................ 96 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 101 Appendix: Figures ...................................................................................................................... 108 ii List of Figures Fig. 1 Barro Rojo dancers (1986) ................................................................................. 109 Fig. 2 Asaltodiario choreographer Jaime Leyva (1992) ............................................... 110 Fig. 3 Mierdas Punk in Sarah Minter’s Nadie es inocente (1986) ............................... 111 Fig. 4 Alma and her friends in Sarah Minter’s Alma punk (1992) ............................... 112 Fig. 5 Debby Kajiyama and José Navarrete in BUSCARTE (2017) ............................. 113 iii Acknowledgements In order to build an effective campfire, a fire tender employs small kindling wood as ignition and gradually works her way to using bigger chunks of wood. She avoids adding too much wood too fast, or the fire will burn out. She gives a growing fire ongoing air but provides it with enough space for it to breathe on its own until it grows to its most hypnotizing moment, when the blaze consumes the largest woodblocks. She allows the fire to reach its hottest point when all of the big blocks have burnt down and red hot embers remain on the ground. The charcoal pieces radiate blue heat waves of warmth as they crackle in the dark hours of a cold night. I have had the great fortune of receiving the skill and attention of magnificent and expert fire tenders as I prepared and completed this project. My dissertation committee, SanSan Kwan, Ivonne del Valle, and Juana María Rodríguez, were instrumental in giving shape to my ideas and helping me define a more nuanced argument. Your prompt responses and generous availability made me feel supported. I would like to thank the following funding bodies and centers for making this project possible and giving me the space and time to focus on my writing and research: Latinx Research Center; Mellon-UC Berkeley Chancellor's Fellowship; UC Dissertation Completion Fellowship; UC Dissertation Year Fellowship; the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/Dance Studies Association Seminar for Emergent Scholars; and the International Federation for Theatre Research's Travel Bursary. I am grateful for the artists whose works I feature in this project, without which these pages would be empty. I had the joy of interviewing Violeta Luna, José Navarrete, Miguel Ángel Díaz, and Claudia Vázquez. I extend a gesture of gratitude to Jill Vuchetich,