An Offering for the New Mestiza Consciousness Jackie Courchene, MFA Student, Dance Studies
In 2020, I began my Dance Studies MFA journey here at Ohio State. I knew that I wanted to somehow focus on reconnecting with my Latinx heritage but given the state of the world during a pandemic, I was not entirely sure where to begin. Dreams of traveling to learn Latinx diasporic forms from the source suddenly felt impossible. I was beginning to feel isolated and unsure of what I was even trying to accomplish.
Mestiza mother was intent on my brother and I being as white passing as possible: we were fair skinned enough, had white names, and spoke little to no Spanish. This is how my mother planned to keep us safe from discrimination, but no matter how hard she tried, we still ran into our fair share of bigotry in white suburban Texas. In a Composition class with Professor Crystal Perkins, I began creating movement that was tethered to the objects my ofrenda. The choreography became a conversation between embodied memories as well as the ritual of arranging the objects that held the memories. Whenever I was assigned to bring in choreography, I would rearrange my ofrenda, hold each item, and see what I could deeply connect with to build movement. Eventually this ritual became the structure of my MFA project. Although I was proud of the work I was making, I began asking myself: am I allowed to be creating ofrendas when this was not part of my cultural practice growing up? Am I inflicting more harm by engaging with this practice?
To ground myself, I began casually creating ofrendas in my home to feel a physical connection to my family. I would collect cacti, flowers, photos, and other objects to arrange in a window. The act of creating this altar, or ofrenda, was not just about honoring family members but conjuring up past seasons of my life and questions around how I have changed. I thought about how isolated I felt at my childhood dance studio with an all-white faculty and grade school, the shame I felt for not speaking Spanish well enough, and the microaggressions I faced whether I was (or wasn’t) being recognized as a Latina in the moment. This ritual of ofrenda building kickstarted the creative While juggling these questions around ethpractice for my MFA project. ics, I began a collaborative process with unFor some context, the practice of building dergraduate dancers. We focus on sharing ofrendas comes from the holiday Día de Los stories and experiences within Latinidad, and Muertos where they are created as a means I introduced them to my ofrenda building pracof honoring family that have transitioned to tice. One of the biggest shifts in this ritual pracancestor. The current state of this practice is tice was coming to realize the homogenized an evangelized version of what the Aztecs did term that is “Latinidad”. It is a huge politically pre-conquest to honor their dead and appease charged and exonymic term that encompassthe gods of the underworld. While I am Chi- es so many people with vastly different expecana/Mestiza with Spanish, Aztec, and Incan riences, hair colors and textures, skin tones, heritage, I was not brought up in a home that languages, and nationalities. While vastly difcelebrated Día de Los Muertos. My Chicana/ ferent, we have collectively survived the colo-
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