Based in San Francisco, California, Liz Duran Boubion is a second generation Chicana and queer multimedia dance-theater artist, mother, presenter and Registered Somatic Movement Therapist. Boubion founded Piñata Dance Collective in 2011 and along with co-producer Highways Performance Space, she will present her evening-length work Cuatro Vientos: Middle of Nowhere Friday and Saturday, June 16 & 17, 2023, at Santa Monica’s renown Highways Performance Space. This is the company’s first event of the year that kicks off the 10th Anniversary celebrations of the Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers (FLACC). As FLACC’s founding entity, PDC is being partially commissioned by FLACC. Tickets are on sale now.
Before appearing at Highways, Cuatro Vientos: Middle of Nowhere will have its premiere at the Joe Goode Annex as part of the San Francisco International Arts Festival and June 8th and 10th. Boubion stated that her work is partially based on research, workshops and conversations she had with artists and women from Una Luz en el Camino, an organization in Mexico for families searching for missing and murdered loved ones.
Piñata Dance Collective – Cuatro Vientos: Middle of Nowhere – Photo by Eva Soltes, Liz Boubion
Cuatro Vientos translates as “four winds” and Middle of Nowhere is set in a desert landscape. It was inspired by a 10-week residency that Boubion led in the Mojave desert during the pandemic. Piñata Dance Collective describes Cuatro Vientos: Middle of Nowhere as a multimedia dance-theater that confronts fears and strategies of walking alone, and the Collective wishes to bring awareness to the global crisis of femicide, the intentional killing of women and girls, “with the anthropomorphic embodiment of birds, an exploration of fear and a Solidarity Search Brigade” in this work.
“Continually framing my choreography are issues of identity, relationships, ecology and cultural relevance. By destabilizing assumptions related to race, class, gender, sexuality, body type or religion, by never accepting them as given or universal, I look for ways to interrupt physical and mental patterns of oppression to generate new movement in our individual bodies and collective unconscious.” Liz Duran Boubion – Piñata Dance Collective website.
Piñata Dance Collective – Photo by Liz Duran
Boubion took her inspiration for this work from the four directions, bird behavior, strategies of walking alone, and set within a four-part representation of time in night, dawn, day and dusk. The evening-length dance-theater piece features four dancers, and video clips from site-specific movement research taken out in the desert that will be part of a projected media installation as a layer within the piece. Cuatro Vientos: Middle of Nowhere includes sound design by Michael Daddona, lighting design by Zoë Klein and costumes by Jamielyn Duggan. The core dancers include include Rosie Dater-Merton, Catalina O’Connor, Abigail Hinson and Clairey Evangelho.
Piñata Dance Collective – Cuatro Vientos: Middle of Nowhere – Photo by Tracey Lindsay Chan
“The first hand stories of the mothers along with the cultural bridging through an Ojos de Dios-making ritual workshop with Lopez served as a collective dramaturgy to portray accuracy, with honor and respect for their wishes when making artistic choices. Dancers and community members have been invited into this process and there will be an open Performance Lab for dancers in Los Angeles to participate in the show.”
Piñata Dance Collective – Cuatro Vientos: Middle of Nowhere – Photo by Tracey Lindsay Chan
In addition to the performance, Boubion is offering a Performance Lab open to movers of all levels to be part of a 4-day community building ritual performance for women, non-binary and femme presenting individuals dedicated to healing and building solidarity for victims of gender-based violence and femicide worldwide. The lab is co-facilitated by local dance artists: Jen Hong and Lindsey Red-Tail. Those who participate in the Performance lab at Highways from June 14-17 will be included in the show to represent strength in numbers and to dance for the souls lost to violence, border crossing and sex trafficking.
For Performance Lab Pre-Registration Click Here.
Cuatro Vientos is a continuation of Boubion’s video performance “Middle of Nowhere” which she produced in 2021. It portrays a woman on a pilgrimage through the Mojave desert, meeting the elements with teeth, lungs and curiosity only a few miles from where the remains of a woman’s corpse were recently found near an abandoned car by the local U.S. Marine base. The ancient desert mythos transforms her body into the element of wind as she crosses into the spiritual realm, discovering lost souls, lost shoes, bullet shells and animal tracks.
Boubion is combining contemporary dance and spiritual practices, responding to the vastness and desolation of the desert and following somatic instincts in collaboration with her dancers, the wind and creative acts of resilience when faced with loss or the realities of danger.
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WHAT: Cuatro Vientos: Middle of Nowhere
WHEN: Fri, June 16, 8:30pm and Sat, June 17, 8:30pm
WHERE: Highways Performance Space
TICKETS: Advance: $20, At the door: $25 – To purchase tickets, please click HERE.
For more information about Piñata Dance Collective, please visit their website.
To learn more about Highways Performance Space, please visit their website.
Written and compiled by Jeff Slayton for LA Dance Chronicle based on information from the Piñata Dance Collective press release.
Featured image: Piñata Dance Collective – Cuatro Vientos: Middle of Nowhere – Photo by Eva Soltes, Liz Boubion
