Mi Baile es Resistencia (2015)

I remember watching the feet of the adults dancing on the dance floor as a kid. I would use their movement as a blueprint to my culture.

Being Latino meant we move to the beat… We have ritmo we navigate.

At Quinces and weddings I would shadow the best dancers and connect my body to the beat. My hips swayed and my feet shuffled and all the adults would applaud… I was accepted. I was Latino.

There was a voice inside me that would say… “be careful. They will see YOU if your movements are too fluid.”

Funny… what connected me to my cultura was also the aspect of me that I felt would Out me and banish me.

As a child I would dance in the middle of the dance floor and watch the men around me move their bodies. I secretly imagined myself dancing with them, and would slowly adjust my moment to compliment their hoping for the day I could do that with no consequence.

My ritmo is resistance, when I have no words or no space for my voice to be heard my hips my curves and my feet let others know I am latino. I move to the sounds or marimbas, maracas and more.

My movement has a voice. It seduces as I spin and hypnotizes as I sway. It rejects the patriarchal imposition that Hombres don’t dance with other men or any other divergence from the hetero courthsip.

My body makes bold queer statements like a revolutionary speech. It rejects the notions that I must rigid, and revels in fluid movement.

Dance was how I allowed my self to be queer as a child. Twirls dips, swaying hips grinding on another man…. All the things “men” do not do… these are the things that we grow up hearing in a machista world. Yet, there are spaces hidden to the Hetero eye where señores , compadres, and vatos can resist without saying a word.

I hold my rhythm deep within my soul… it courses through my body. And when I feel far from my own latinidad all I need to do is a merengue step, and Cumbia kick to escape the white walls…..the White Noise.

And when I feel suffocated by the machismo and sexism of my own cultura I dance my queer resistance.