Mariana Valencia: Jacklean (In Rehearsal)

In Jacklean (in rehearsal) choreographer Mariana Valencia and musician Jazmin “Jazzy” Romero improvise dance, sound, and text to propose that the rehearsal process can be the performance. Drawing on their shared Latina identity—Valencia’s Guatemalan, and Romero’s Salvadorian and Mexican descent—this piece considers their queer, Brown, and first-generation immigrant experiences. Valencia’s dance draws on everyday gestures, social dance, freestyle, and postmodern traditions, and is accompanied by Romero’s polyvocal repertoire of cumbia, punk, jazz, and electronic music in a dynamic interplay. Jacklean (in rehearsal) considers the interplay between the individual, the collective, and inherited intergenerational transmission, in a work that savors the thrill of the unexpected.