Co-directed by Mayra Morales and Ray Eliot Schwartz, professors of dance at Fundación Universidad de las Américas, Puebla, Performática is a festival, a conference, a workshop, a community builder, an exchange project, and a creative vision.

Inspired by years of exposure to international workshops, performance festivals, academic conferences, and community art projects, Performática aims to synthesize the best of these events into a unique forum. The event brings together an international cadre of practicing dancers, choreographers, theorists, and teachers of contemporary dance and related movement arts.

Over the course of the forum, workshops, roundtable discussions, and performances will be convened with the goal of facilitating international and intercultural exchange of practices, knowledge, theory and culture as related to the contemporary discourse of body movement, expression, and philosophy.

Etymology and Concept

The word PERFORMÁTICA comes from Latin: PER, FORNIR and MATOS.

And so, the meaning of Performática could be: giving life through movement in action and thought, beyond defined form, towards change and transformation.

Our motto then, has become: the concept of generous exchange. We wish to open diverse and alternative performative spaces through which we can facilitate a continual transaction among artists, creators, thinkers, academics, students, audiences, individuals and groups who have the desire to share their practices, thoughts and philosophies. We encourage acceptance towards any artistic discipline with a focus on movement and the body, the other and the difference. We like to believe that these principles are the beginning of tolerance and respect for cultural and intellectual diversity.

History

The first Performática took place 15-23rd of March, 2007 in Puebla, Mexico. The second took place March 24-April 4, 2008. The third, April 13th-25th, 2009. Spanning generally between 9 and 11 days, with - in 2009, over 28 different performance events over the course of the forum (as well as workshops, papers, dance films, events for children, and discussions) the public impact was in the thousands.

In 2008, along with over 150 participating artists - representing 70 groups, there were over 104 individual workshops offered and 198 Mexican students registered. In 2009 there were over 150 Mexican students, 84 individual workshops, and 72 groups representing over 125 individual artists. These participants had access, free of charge, to world-class teaching and performing over the course of the event. Thousands of audience members were, as well, given free access to these artists on the stages and sites of Cholula and Puebla.

In April 2011 Performática: Replanteando Prácticas happened. There were about 40 artists from Mexico, United States, Brazil, Argentina, Korea, Spain, Netherlands, Italy, Ireland and Germany who gathered, along with around 150 students and a thousand audience members. Around 30 workshops in  contemporary dance, Somatic practices, improvisation, contact improvisation, dance and politics, voice and movement, dreams and movement, among others, were given. As well, performances were offered in theaters, open spaces, gardens, and informal studio showings, with other events occuring in alternative spaces such as the Don Apolonio Gallery in San Andrés Cholula and the Casa del Caballero Águila in  San Pedro Cholula.

During Performatica 2011 the idea presenting a workshop was reimagined and proposals were made for investigating the work of co-direction and collaboration within the framework of 11 laboratories, which offered a range of shared experiences and diverse methodologies for working and researching relationships in pedagogical and artistic practice. Within these laboratories, presenting artists collaborated with participating students to rediscover ways of working, explore  joint questions and conversations, and develop possibilities for future projects. They discovered the challenges of working together while also investigating options for new interactions.

One of the key questions of the 2011 event was: What happens when we don’t have an exact plan, when we are not entirely clear what we are doing and yet we keep committing to our practice? How can we interact within the search for our practice in the movement arts and what can we gain from that interaction?

A note about Communication

Performática’s focus on the movement arts is, in part, an attempt to locate the body as an integral site of communication. It is through the interface of physicality that we invest in moments that may transcend linguistic barriers. We do not believe, however, that bodies are neutral entities, untouched or uninformed by cultural difference. It is precisely through a direct engagement with one another’s corporeal histories that we hope to learn with one another.

Beyond the physical, Performática operates within a bi-lingual dynamic. English and Spanish are the operative spoken languages and while it is optimal to have some capacity in both, it is not a requirement for participation. There are enough people around with the facility to slide between them that not having fluency in one or the other should not deter you from participating, should you feel moved to do so.