Dancing Earth

In collaboration with New Mexican historian Dr. Estevan Rael-Gálvez, UNBOUND is a dance theater work/embodied archive examining the history of Native slavery in the U.S. Southwest, as well as its continued impacts on the land, the descendants of enslaved Native people and the cultures woven into this history. Dancing Earth, an intercultural contemporary dance company rooted in global indigenous relationships and ecological-cultural diversity, commissions artist Sarah Hogland-Gurulé, in collaboration with other Dancing Earth artists, to translate three decades of Dr. Rael-Gálvez’s research into contemporary performance ritual. All collaborators involved share ancestral history of Native enslavement within their lineages. UNBOUND will be contextualized within multi-sensory experiences that include aspen branch gathering, story-sharing community dinners with locally grown foods native to the region, oral history soundscapes, documentary imagery and opening ceremonies before each performance.

Land Acknowledgement: Dancing Earth respectively creates and lives with the lands traditionally stewarded by the Tiwa and Tewa Pueblo people.