As a graduate student in Dance, I work within the Performing Arts, Dance Studies, and Somatic/Anatomy/Movement Studies fields. My research interests are concentrated on the widely felt but not often named concept of bicultural straddling, and the liminality of that lived experience. As a Cuban-American, I am particularly interested in these experiences on the bodies of exiles, refugees, the 1.5 generation, and second generation immigrants. This research is expressed across two forms, written scholarship and choreographic works.  

I am interested in translating this often “hard to describe” liminal experience into dance, through choreography and performance. “The attributes of liminality or of liminal personae (“threshold people”) are necessarily ambiguous, since this condition and these persons elude or slip through the network of classifications that normally locate states and positions in cultural space. Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between...” (Turner, 1969) My research examines this condition of liminality, how real people experience it, and the ways in which it can be construed as positive, negative, both, or neither. Within the larger understanding of liminality, I take a personal interest in the concept of “mestiza consciousness”, as expressed by Gloria Anzaldúa. My scholarship will create space in the Dance Studies canon for the diverse narratives of Latine dancers, teachers, and choreographers.