ABOUT AMELIA'S INFORMAL SHOWING

“Spanky” is a performance work that wrestles with issues of identity, family, and queer love. Dramaturgically grounded in stories from Amelia’s aunt Patricia’s life, this performance draws on dance, theater, and performance art practices to examine the experiences of Latina lesbians in the 1970s and 80s.

“Spanky,” uses the medium of performance to explore queer Latinx history through movement practice, text, and critical fabulation. Women of color feminism teaches us to look to alternative archives–our kitchens, our ancestors, our communities, and our flesh–as places of creation. This work draws on dance, theater, and performance art practices to examine the experiences of Latina lesbians in the 1970s and 80s.

Patricia—known as Spanky by her friends—was a queer, brown, butch woman who grew up in a time and cultural environment that rejected her lesbian identity. Spanky was not a hero. She was not an ACT UP activist or famous lesbian poet. She, like many other BIPOC queer women of her time, found herself stuck in places and spaces that refused to accept her. Trapped in systems made to work against her, she struggled with addiction, incarceration, and HIV. She also had a childhood, lovers, close sibling relationships, and passions. While this performance wrestles with issues of incarceration and AIDS, it critically celebrates queerness, love, and joy in the face of insurmountable systems. I see this work as a love letter to our queer ancestors who did not have the agency and freedom to safely be themselves.

ABOUT AMELIA ROSE ESTRADA

Amelia Rose Estrada is a queer, Latina-Jewish performance maker and scholar. She is interested in crafting work that speaks to Latinidad, gender, queerness, and intergenerational ancestral relationality. Her creative practice draws on methods from dance, performance art, and theater. Her choreography has been presented at University Settlement in NYC, SPACE in Portland, Maine, the Spark Theater Festival NYC, and at Cuerpo Mediado Festival de Videodanza in Rosario, Argentina, among others. As a theater creative, Amelia co-choreographed CarmXn, a modern adaptation of the opera Carmen with Hogfish Maine, was the associate choreographer for Moonbox’s production of Sweeney Todd, and co-directed and choreographed the musical adaptation of Twelfth Night at Tufts University. In addition to her individual projects, Amelia makes lesbian dance theater with her artistic partner, Elle Jansen, under the company name MELLE. As a freelance performing artist, Amelia has performed for and been inspired by her work with Edwin and Matt Cahill, Joy Clark, Eventual Dance Company, Brian Sanders' JUNK, and Leilani Chirino Dance and Drum Ensemble, among others. Amelia is also a PhD candidate in the Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies and her current research focuses on how dance participates in the cultural and national imaginary of Dominicanidad in the Dominican Republic and diaspora.

ABOUT MIDDAY + ROUGH DRAFTS

Midday Movement Series ("MIDDAY") is a BIPOC-led grassroots initiative cultivating a new, diverse generation of dance leaders through professional development, mentorship, and advocacy.

MIDDAY's newest program, Rough Drafts, is a process-focused program supporting early (1-4 yr) and mid-career (4-10 yr) contemporary dance-makers to deepen their understanding of their own choreography and how to communicate to collaborators and audiences. From January-June, MIDDAY will host one monthly informal showing with our Rough Drafts artists. Our program will culminate with black box work-in-progress showcases on Saturday, July 13, at 2:00 PM and 8:00 PM.