Void Decryption ERROR: A multimedia evening at Highways by Vanessa Hernández Cruz

Vanessa Hernández Cruz’s solo work, Exhale Static, Inhale Fumes, feels different every time she performs it. She most recently revised the piece (which premiered at REDCAT NOW in 2023) in a small gallery in San Francisco, where she scaled it down and found a new way to interact with its structure. Now, she’s bringing it back to Los Angeles for a weekend at Highways Performance Space November 1-2.

“I’m feeling really nostalgic about it…The meanings feel different every time I am performing this particular work, this idea of finding community within technology—within escapism—and the friction of all of that intertwined,” she said. “It’s always going to be evolving every time I perform this work, which is why I love it.”

The speed at which the work evolves is somewhat a result of the subject matter: technology advances right before our eyes every day. But improvisational structures are built into Hernández Cruz’s choreography with intention. Her work is adaptable so that she can meet her own access needs, determining what they are each day and morphing into new modalities for each performance.

“My works [are] all in a lot of ways, structural improvisation. That kind of modality for me has really helped me with my own access needs within the work,” she said.

Recently, Hernández Cruz has expanded her rehearsal practice to meet the access needs of a full cast of Disabled artists —Em Waters, Ande Diedjomahor, India Harville, and Lu Chen—and technology offers a unique advantage in this case. It’s one of the complexities her work grapples with often: tech offers vast opportunities for connection, but it also threatens isolation and overstimulation.

The ensemble work Hernández Cruz is developing with her cast, Rain Glass Vortex, will premiere alongside Exhale Static, Inhale Fumes in an evening called Void Decryption ERROR at Highways, a full-length evening that takes place in the same world. The performance will be a masked event that includes audio description for both evenings, tactile art displays, a descriptor program via QR code, and an ADA accessible space and restroom. Program notes describe the two pieces together as creating a ‘dynamic narrative that reflects on the intersection of digital and physical worlds, capturing the tension between isolation and connection and the evolving nature of community in contemporary society.’

“Rain Glass Vortex takes place in the same realm of Exhale Static, Inhale Fumes: this big simulation, a virtual reality. Rain Glass Vortex brings my character back into a dystopian world,” she explains. “I’m transported back into this really harsh reality where there are people with me, but they’re in boxes. They’re not with me physically,” she explained.

Though Hernández Cruz will perform in person, the rest of the ensemble will be projected live into her onstage realm via projection mapping, engineered by Megan Fowler-Hurst, Huntrezz, and Álvaro Cáceres. While experiencing entrapment and disconnection in their respective boxes, the dancers’ movement will explore their reliance on technology, and the resulting desire to be set free.

“Throughout the work, we are striving to find liberation, what it means to feel at home, and this intense feeling of letting go,” Hernández Cruz said.

For the cast, a lot of the rehearsal process has been an exercise in letting go, releasing the ableist structures they face in most dance settings in favor of holding each other up in community. With Hernández Cruz at the helm, their collective understanding of rules changes. The artists have space, and even power, to voice their needs and how those change daily.

“It’s been beautiful that we can easily communicate what our needs are without feeling that institutional fear that says, ‘if I miss this rehearsal, I might get fired.’ I can do some pre-recorded things, [the artists] can work on [their] own — and also, really leaning into stillness,” Hernández Cruz told me.

“I know my dancers have been kind of struggling with that internal trauma from codified dance…there’s sometimes a little resistance when I say, ‘You can [choose] stillness. It’s okay. You can be in a rehearsal off camera. That’s okay.’ We reassure each other in different ways. I’m also kind of dismantling that for myself too, because I’ve been through that process.”

Ultimately, it has taken time and trust to deconstruct their ideas of rehearsal and choreography. The cast has needed to cancel rehearsal several times, but Hernández Cruz’s choreographic structures allow space for adjustment.

“Being able to provide that kind of access to dancers, especially disabled, chronically ill artists, has been a very profound experience for all of us. The process has been so beautiful, just because I get to honor their bodies in a different way,” Hernández Cruz shared. “There’s a lot of breadth and room for that kind of access, and there’s just so much trust within our group, our cohort, our community.”

Part of that trust is built upon Hernández Cruz’s constant prioritization of the artists. Beyond simply paying the dancers, she acknowledges their vulnerability in dancing in front of an audience that may not understand their context and encourages them to choose what works for them anyway.

“We’ve had that conversation: whoever’s going to watch this, you know, may not see it as dance, and that’s okay. The important thing is that [the dancers] all feel held and feel good in the work, regardless of how [they] want to perform it,” she said.

Her career experience and solo work has led her here, to a moment where she can distribute resources and lead with intention. She wants to push forward in a way that is more equitable, and she wants to see more disabled people in performance spaces.

“The important aspect of this work was: how can I bring more disabled artists on stage? Artists that we normally don’t see; wheelchair dancers, neurodivergent dancers, on stage. Where are the other disabled folks that aren’t necessarily ‘palatable’ to audiences? There’s still a lack of representation; I want more disabled people on stage. I don’t want to be the only one.”

Hernández Cruz hopes to tour Void Decryption ERROR next year, but if you’re in Los Angeles, you can see more disabled people on stage at Highways Performance Space Nov. 1-2.

To learn more about Vanessa Hernández Cruz, please visit her website.

To learn more about Highways Performance Space, please visit their website.

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Written by Celine Kiner for LA Dance Chronicle.

Featured image: Vanessa Hernández Cruz in “Exhale Static, Inhale Fumes” – Photo by Angel Origgi.