On the Edge: 2nd International Latinx Performance Art Festival
On the Edge: 2nd International Latinx Performance Art Festival
October 5, 2023 - October 7, 2023
Reception: October 5, 2023
On the Edge is the second LatinX performance art festival in Seattle, showcasing a wide range of experimental performance with themes of inclusion, identity and intersectionality.
Featuring a wide range of pan-Latine/x artists and supporters, these performances will range from intimate, single-person storytelling, to medium-length, mixed-media group performances, as well as durational, non-traditional, conceptual and video performances.
The event is headlined by visiting artist, Katherine Adamenko, a Cuban-raised, New York-based performance artist and Butoh writer, who will be presenting an iconic third-wave feminist piece from the 90s, Beauty Borg. Accompanying the live performances will be video showcasing further work by the performers as well as major historical pieces in Latine/x performance art history.
This festival is supported by the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture/King Street Station and 4Culture, with further support from La Sala, Centro Cultural de Mexico, CoCA and others. Admission is FREE with donations accepted. A photographer/videographer will be documenting the event.
What to Expect
Live performances, experimental film, and lectures.
The festival contains partial nudity; exploration of identity, of political and racial persecution and violence, and of death; simulated self-mutilation; religious and spiritual themes; and may contain flashing imagery.
Program
The following performances are subject to change. All performances are held in the afternoon or evening.
Thursday, October 5
4:15-4:20 Director's Welcome
4:20-4:30 Marvin Colson
4:30-5:00 Tatiana Garmendia
5:00-5:30 Dhyana Garcia
5:30-6:00 Xavier and Katherine
6:00-6:30 Vicente Montanez
6:30-7:00 Katherine Adamenko
7:00-7:30 Sonia Aguilar (formerly Sony Voodoo)
7:30-8:00 Santiago
Friday, October 6
1:00-1:20 Loren Hererra Video
1:20-1:40 Xavier Lopez
1:40-2:00 Vicente Montanez
2:00-2:20 Santiago
2:20-2:40 Sonia Aguilar (formerly Sony Voodoo)
2:40-3:00 Katherine Adamenko
3:00-3:20 Tatiana Garmendia
3:20-3:40 Dhyana Garcia
Saturday, October 7
12:00-12:30 Vicente Montanez
12:30-1:00 Tatiana Garmendia
1:00-1:30 Katherine Adamenko
1:30-2:00 Xavier Lopez solo
2:00-3:30 Antonio Rodriguez (deejay)
Artist Bios
Xavier Lopez, Curator/Director/Performer at OtE: 2nd International Latinx Performance Art Festival
I am a conceptual, mixed-media, Latinx performance artist. I received my MFA from the University of California-Davis. As a child, before I knew what art was, I watched my father paint murals in the Los Angeles Chicano Art Movement. Mentally devouring scenes of Latino artists expressing what it meant to be Chicano, I watched my father paint his expressionist, politically charged murals, day-dreaming of my own future. At the LA Museums and galleries, I saw Warhol's "Brillo Boxes" and conceptual films of Joseph Beuys, Gilbert and George, and Jackson Pollock. Later, at university, my mind would be blown away by the work of Marcel Duchamp, who influenced my now mixed media performances. It was during this time that I began to perceive an unspoken difference between how my heroes made art and how I--as a young Latino artist--was expected to. I desperately wanted to make art that had meaning beyond the expectations of others—art that reflected my individual life! As a young artist, I searched unsuccessfully for a sense that my work had a place but I had no models and no history to fall back on. I decided then and there to make my own models and create my own history!
It is through performance that I seek to push the boundaries of how we perceive the essence of ethnic/cultural/Latinx performance, to give voice to underrepresented groups, to expand the language of marginalized performance, and to broaden access through guerrilla and drop-in performances. At UCDavis, critical theory began to infuse my work, opening it up to incorporate queer, feminist, and other identity discourses. I created two theoretical treatises, The Soft Cyborg, a variation on Haraway's Cyborg and Putoh--melding Butoh and Latino identity performance. I am part of a new breed of Latinx artists intent on expanding the themes and expectations available to minority artists--making art that is individual--defying traditional expectations of collective identity. I choose personal, everyday materials, a collage of sheets, candy, fake flowers, tin foil, and personal items to tell my stories. This important conceptual, performative, and material shift cannot be overstated. It is a stance of liberation that pushes the boundaries of expectations and dares to say that individual lives of color matter; which, in itself, is powerful and revolutionary, problematizing racial, masculine, cultural and identity essentialism in an intellectual investigation that is in no way post-race.
In 2016, I was asked to put my dreams into action by programming an evening of performance art for La Sala Latinx Artists Network's 'La Cocina' in Pioneer Square. I co-curated On the Edge: Latinx Performance Art Festival, with Lauren Davis, Assistant Director at ArtXchange Gallery. This collaborative project was the first all-Latinx night of performance art. The Festival led to us becoming part of university curricula across the globe when Marvin Carlson mentioned our event in Routledge's textbook Performance: A Critical Introduction:
"There is a growing body of...artists who specifically identify themselves as Latinx, headed by...Xavier Lopez...featured in the first festival of Latinx performance, held at the Good Arts center...in Seattle... Latinx represents an important orientation in modern performance... concern(ed) with developing more inclusive and flexible attitudes toward designations of gender, race, and ethnicity...addressing this major reorientation of the field."
The first On the Edge Festival was one-night, small but expansive event dedicated to serving Seattle and the Seattle Latinx community, giving voice to local Latinx Artists presenting work rarely seen in our communities. Our night of performance was fundamentally Latina/o/x, and part of a larger conversation currently redefining the nature of Latino performance moving forward. The second edition of On the Edge will be even bigger and more exciting!
Katherine Adamenko, Headliner/Lead Performer/New York City
Katherine Adamenko is a multi-disciplinary feminist performance artist, actress, butoh dancer, choreographer, and writer. Her boundary-breaking and interactive performances have been presented in theaters, festivals, galleries, museums, conferences, and site-specific locations throughout the United States and Europe. Her character-driven, body-based work often explores embodied emotions, gender roles, and the satirization of female beauty. She is excited to perform at this year's LatinX Performance Art Festival in Seattle where she will present two putoh-inspired works. Putoh is a very special brand of performance art co-created by Katherine and artist Xavier Lopez (a co-founder of the festival) in 2001. Putoh draws from Katherine's Cuban/Hispanic heritage and Xavier's Chicano heritage combined with a fervent post-punk sensibility and Japanese Butoh dance.
Recently, Katherine was a member of the international Endlessly Performing Artists group project, creating numerous performances for the camera. More recent festivals include Irondale's On-Women Festival, TNC's Lower East Side Festival of the Arts, and the UNFIX NYC Arts and Ecology Festival. Katherine was one of 13 artists to perform at the 2019 New York Butoh Institute Festival produced by Vangeline Theatre and Butoh Next 10x10, a symposium to celebrate the publication of the Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance (in which she published an article).
As an entertainer and storyteller with three solo shows under her belt, Katherine has created her brand of feminist "cabaret performance art" that fuses gender politics and satire with monologues, musical theatre, and dance in highly charged and often humorous character vignettes.
As an artistic disrupter, Katherine enjoys turning traditional notions of spectatorship on its head by performing in non-traditional performance spaces and producing immersive and intimate audience experiences in such places as on the unsuspecting laps of academic conference-goers to her bathroom, closet, and a kitchen. As a ballerina, bodybuilder, and butoh dancer, Katherine uses this eclectic background to inform her ongoing dance works and site-specific movement installations. Additionally, she has worked and collaborated with well-known international artists such as Pablo Helguera and Guillermo Gomez Pena.
Katherine has had performance residencies at the Obie award-winning Theater for the New City and Evolution Arts - City of Yonkers. She received a full teaching fellowship in Performance Studies from the Department of Theatre and Dance, University of California, Davis, and lecture and travel grants to develop artistic and academic work. Katherine holds a BA in Modern Dance and Joint Political Science/History from Rutgers University and an MA in Contemporary Theatre Practice (with Distinction) from the University of Essex in England.
Dhyana García, Performer/ Daipan Butoh/Seattle
Dhyana is an international Mexican Butoh performer based in Seattle, and mindful movement specialist whose work and research centers on dance and movement as healing and transformative practices. "I consider movement and the body as powerful creative doors for empowerment and self-discovery."
Co-founder of DAIPANbutoh Collective, dance, performance, and mindfulness faculty at the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Science at the University of Washington, and has more than 30 years of performing nationally and internationally in Mexico, Ecuador, Chile, Japan, South Korea, Canada, and the United States.
During her professional ballet and modern dance career, she performed with the National Ballet of Mexico, Luna Negra Dance Theater, The Chicago Moving Company in Chicago, and The Chamber Dance Company and BQDanza in Seattle. As a Butoh artist, her solo and collaborative work has been presented in Seattle, New York City, and Minneapolis in the US and Seoul, Korea; Kyoto, Japan; Toronto, Canada; Santiago, Chile; and Mexico City. Dhyana fell in love with Butoh in 2005 by watching a performance that changed her life. Since then, she has kept searching and researching about its healing and transformative practices. Butoh master Diego Piñon has been one of her main mentors, and Yukio Waguri, Natsu Nakajima, and Japanese troupe Sankai Juku are three of her main butoh inspirations. She also has been learning tremendously from Seattle's Butoh front runners and dear DAIPAN collaborators Joan Laage, Sheri Brown, Helen Thorsen, and Kaoru Okomura. She is honored and grateful for her mentors: American Midwest modern dance choreographer Nana Shineflu, Mexican butoh master Diego Piñon, Ecuadorian Choreographer Carla Barragan, and UW dance faculty Jen Salk, Juliet McMains, and Hannah Wiley.
Dhyana feels that she is and will always be a student of dance since she loves learning. Her teaching and creative work have been propelled by the work of German choreographer Pina Bausch, Japanese butoh master Kazuo Ohno, the dance and technology research of American postmodern choreographer Merce Cunningham and the dance as healing practices of Anna Halprin, Gabrielle Roth, and Andrea Olsen. Dhyana also enjoys teaching Pilates and yoga to people of various backgrounds from her studio in Greenwood Seattle, and is an Ayurvedic Wellness chancellor.
Tatiana Garmandia, Performer/Seattle
Tatiana Garmendia was born in Cuba at the height of the Cold War and remembers playing in abandoned missile trenches as a girl. She was interned in la Trampa, a camp for political dissidents located in Santiago. An International Rescue Committee plane ticket brought her family to the USA in 1969. Moving to Seattle in 1993, Garmendia has taught painting, drawing, and printmaking at Seattle Central College ever since.
In her interdisciplinary work, history is understood as meditations on national and private mythologies, as the stories we tell others and whisper to ourselves. Her work has been exhibited throughout the US and in many countries, including England, Italy, Germany, Mexico, and India. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including two Artist Trust Fellowships, a Cintas International Fellowship, and Pollock Krasner Grant. Her works are in public collections in Seattle, New York, Washington D.C., Miami, Illinois, California, Ohio, and the Dominican Republic.
Loren Herrera, Video performance/Seattle
Originally from Tacoma, Washington, Loren Mathew Walker Herrera is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher who received his Bachelor of Arts in Science, Technology, & Society from the University of Washington Bothell. Loren is also a UWB Study Abroad Ambassador, where they studied in Ehime Prefecture, Japan. He grew up in the woods of the Key Peninsula, Washington, where he would spend the majority of his time either exploring nature or staring at a glowing screen. Later, literature stole his concentration, and writing has long been an integral part of his life in all aspects. He is the son of a First Generation Mexican-American mother and interdisciplinary artist whose grandfather served as a mountain guide for Francisco "Pancho" Villa in Sonora, Mexico, during the Mexican Revolution. He has one older sister, who is both a gifted singer and a devoted business manager.
Loren met his father at the age of 28. His father is from Bremerton, Washington, and is a descendant of James Longmire, one of Washington's earliest pioneer wagon settlers, who settled near the base of Mount Rainier. Loren was 15 years old when he first reached Mount Rainier's awe-inspiring summit, thanks to the help of his older, more experienced cousin. Lastly, Loren was mentored on guitar at an early age by guitarist Dan Page of The Dan Page Group / The Dan Page Trip. Loren continues to make music when he can afford the opportunity. He's currently in the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities (MAPH) at the University of Chicago, focusing on Cinema & Media Studies.
Vicente Montañez, Performer/Special Guest/Mexico
Vicente has been a resident of the Pacific Northwest for the past 30 years and was born in Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico in 1964. When he was 13 years old he joined his first company of theatre, "Compañia Los Clásicos del Teatro," which performed musical and children's theatre. He was immediately interested in mime and in 1978 was invited to create a mime company, "Compañia de Pantomima Yesterday." For six years he traveled the country with both companies participating and performing in mime and theatre festivals.
In the 80's Vicente met two of the most influential teachers in his artistic career, Sigfrido Aguilar and Rodrido Villamil. As a student at CEDART school in Morelia, Mexico, he met Rodrigo Villamil, and they founded their home group "TIET" Taller de Investigacion y Experimentacion Teatral. TIET became the most innovative group in Morelia, and was nationally and internationally honored and recognized while touring with the company for 15 years throughout Mexico and Europe. The group established a school dedicated to theatre investigation and experimentation and the first department of Investigation and Theatre Documentation.
Vicente studied in the studio of Sigfrido Aguilar and assisted in several of his international workshops on mime and corporeal expression throughout the years. Sigfrido is considered one of the world's best teachers of mime, pantomime, and clowns, and also the creator of the National and International Festival of Mime in Mexico.
From 1986 to 1994 Vicente was part of the non-profit artists collective, "Colectivo Artistico Morelia A C," a multi-disciplined artist collective under the direction of Jose Luis Rodruigez Avalos. This collective is responsible for sponsoring and amplifying art and culture throughout cultural national and international events such as the National and International Festival of Mime in Mexico, workshops, symposiums, covering literature, theatre, mime, music, TV and radio.
Vicente is also a painter, musician, graphic and web designer, as silk screen printer he specializes in art reproduction and posters.
Sony Voodoo, Performer/Special Guest/Seattle
Sony Voodoo, was born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico. Since she was a little girl, she always felt attracted and connected with things that weren't considered ordinary, or "pretty." She used to play in the mud with toads, cochineas, and many other creatures and loves cats, chickens and other animals. Sony always preferred to be outdoors, climbing trees and has been hyperactive ever since. At age five, she practiced Karate and other martial arts and later started practicing different kinds of dance. She started to fuse some of these with her own theater dark performance improvisations and ideas.
Sony is always evolving and creating new things, mostly influenced by occult, dark nature, troubled minds, art in all forms, obscure emotions, rituals, and many more.
She currently lives in Lynnwood, WA, and loves Seattle and WA state.