Armadillos Immigration Performance. Production Addresses Colonization and Climate Change
Armadillos (Little Armored Ones) marks the second part of a three-part choreographic project responding to a 17th-century painting by Cornelius Visscher called América that glorifies colonization. The painting left me uneasy since when I first saw it years ago. Visscher depicts a giant and regal warrior woman arriving in the “New World.” In the middle of the canvas, America sits on top of an animal as if she were on a throne. Behind her is a newly developed scene full of farmers tilling the land and sheep grazing the field. Ahead of her is an indigenous land with people dancing naked and in the midst of a cannibalistic bacchanalia. Oddly, she rides into this exotic land not on a horse but on an armadillo. Regio (Royal), the first part of the project, manifested as a 2021 bilingual dance theatre production that uses contemporary dance and puppetry to share stories about Latinx immigrant workers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Armadillos immigration performance was originally supposed to be a synchronous, in-person event but was modified due to the physical gathering restrictions put in place during the pandemic.
Through Armadillos, I return to the painting. This picture is a glimpse of what we know full well to be a scenario of colonization, but why the armadillo as the vehicle for this process? What has changed since Visscher etched this painting over three hundred years ago, and what has become of the role of the armadillo in the hemispheric imaginary? The next iteration of my project, Armadillos (Little Armored Ones), is a bilingual dance theater performance with stories about undocumented migrant workers in milk dairy ranches and furry mammals popularly known as armadillos who are venturing into new northern territories because it is getting warmer in the US. These stories collide to paint a tapestry of the impacts of climate change, and the increased demand of service delivery companies by consumer demands. The performance explores the interconnections between what compels people and armadillos to seek out new places as the climate changes and in the face of a changing labor economy that continues to invisibilize migrant labor.
Armadillos is a trilingual participatory and large-scale puppetry installation performance that addresses the interconnected themes of migration, climate change, and indigeneity. Armadillos are typical of Latin America and have only recently been unpredictably traveling to northern United States because of warmer temperatures in the area. Audiences will be able to crawl inside colorful replicas of the armadillos and find a comfortable bed and pillow. They will hear a musical score that mixes sound of wind and people walking on various surfaces with stories about migrant workers who traveled to Central New York from Central America and the Mexican Yucatan peninsula. Migrants from these areas are also newly traveling to northern United States to seek out work in dairy farms. Armadillos explores the interconnections between what compels people and armadillos to seek out new places as the climate changes and in the face of a changing labor economy that continues to invisibilize indigenous migrant labor. Armadillos immigration performance confronts viewers with this reality.
[Featured Image armadillo illustrated by collaborator Lily Gershon 2022]
