Border Dances
Minerva Tapia offers a choreographic proposal that is based on two transcendent elements in contemporary cultural processes – borders and interculturality – expressed through works that critically re-create themes imbued with international relevance, such as migratory flows (Dance of the Undocumented, They Dance Alone), the hate killings of young women in Ciudad Juarez (The Juarez Family), life in the maquiladora industry (Juana’s Little Machine), and victims executed by narco-traffickers (The Blanket), as well as other themes that lend themselves to choreographic and interpretive expression.
In 1995 Minerva Tapia formed the highly regarded Minerva Tapia Dance Group, which has established important cross-border artistic collaborations and linkages. She is also co-founder of the U.S.-Mexico Binational Dance Showcase. Ms. Tapia has created more than 50 choreographic works.
The Blanket / La cobija (4:24)
A traditional Mexican blanket, with its brightly colored stripes, recalls my childhood. Or it did, until a new image took root in my mind, completely erasing the former association. This new image came via the continuous news coverage of dead bodies wrapped in blankets. Drug traffickers have incorporated the blankets into a near ritual, in which they wrap their victims in a blanket and then seal the “package” with duct tape about the head and feet. Narcos leave the wrapped bodies as signals of a “settling of accounts,” but they have also killed my happy memories of the blankets of my early years.Premiered April 21, 2007, at the IX International Dance Festival / Tijuana “Bodies in Motion”