Category: News and Events (Page 3 of 4)

Alvin Rangel Presents Part I Tango Vesre

 

Alvin Rangel

Alvin Rangel

In a well attended presentation on Friday April 12 in Rubendall Recital Hall, Alvin Rangel of  Tango Vesre, introduced his project and gave a brief overview of modern Argentina’s history, and the evolution of Tango over the last 100 years.

Alvin Rangel, who is currently an associate Professor of Dance at California State University, began working on Tango Vesre, which means “Inverted Tango”, in 2010. From his website, Alvin Rangel describes his project:

“Tango Vesre [Inverted Tango] is a dance performance that through live performance spotlights a 100-year  evolution of all-male tango dance in the Buenos Aires of 1910 and 2010.  Tango Vesre includes two duets, Parallel Tango by Alejandro Cervera and Bound Tango by Alvin Rangel. Although the work is framed within the Argentinean Tango aesthetics, the performance puts into motion issues of power negotiation, equality, marginalization, gender roles, sexual identity, acceptance, rejection and male dancing bodies.”

Rangel explained how Tango has become one of the most popular forms of dance, known for its “beauty, passion, drama and sexually-charged energy.” The tradition has established a heteronormative culture, where Tango has been branded as strictly a heterosexual dance. Tango has a clear leader and follower, emphasizing the macho Argentine culture, where the man is in control and the woman follows. Rangel wanted to break out of this strict tradition and explore the origins of tango in the slums and lower classes of Buenos Aires, and specifically when men danced with other men.

Rangel discussed his research into the history of tango and  reviewed the historiography. He found that there is gaping hole in information on male-male tango practices, even though it began during the formative period in the early twentieth century.

Rangel explains, “the lack of evidence concerning the male partnerships in tango’s literature raised many questions for me as a dance scholar, dancer and choreographer.  Therefore, I became interested in analyzing these male partnerships from historic, performative and choreographic perspectives, examining issues of homosexual bonding and sexual identity through tango dance practice.” In context of the discrimination of homosexuals in Argentine society in this early period, Rangel came up with the central question for his project, “Did the all-male tango dance practice enable closeted homosexuals to embody their sexual identity?” He clarifies, “This question I raise does not assume that the male/male partnerships were exclusively a homosexual performance, but rather considers how a homo-social milieu facilitated homosexual bonding.”

Male-male tango practice

Dancing in the River

 

In his presentation he explained the origins for the term Tango VesreVesre, means revés or “inverted” in lunfardo, a slang that developed among criminals as code language in prisons and slums. An example of lunfardo would be turning Café, meaning coffee, into feca, tango would become gotán, and hotel –> telo. Vesre was useful in describing how the roles are reversed in queer tango and breaks out of the strict heteronormative structure.

Rangel adopted multiple roles at once in the development of his project. He played the role of choreographer, dancer and scholar, which is quite the feat to pull off. In his presentation, he demonstrated how he developed another form of Tango called “Bounce Tango” which adopts more fluid movements and is not determined by a clear leader or follower.

Demonstrating the "hook " move

Demonstrating the “hook ” move

In the above picture, Alvin works with his partner, Yebel Gallegos and demonstrates how he reinterpreted a classic move used in tango, usually a hooking movement using the legs and he changed it to hooking the arms instead.

 

For more information, see:

http://alvinrangel.net/Tango_Vesre/HOME.html

Cuba Mosaic January 2013

The second trip that Dickinson has taken to Cuba within a year is part of another mosaic this time led by Professor Asuncion Arnedo-Aldrich. The class is Spanish 231, focusing on sustainability.

 

Please use this link to access their blog (en Español)

Habana 2013 blog

Hugo Chavéz dies

One of Latin America’s most influential and controversial leaders died today, Tuesday March 5th. Hugo Chavéz the President of Venezuela since 1998, has been the leading figure in the leftist movement in Latin America.

 

See below for a report from the New York Times:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/world/americas/hugo-chavez-of-venezuela-dies.html?hp&_r=0

Tango Vesre: Queering the All-Male Tango Practice

Friday, April 12, noon

Saturday, April 13, 7 p.m.

Tango Vesre: Queering the All-Male Tango Practice

Rubendall Recital Hall,
Weiss Center for the Arts

Dickinson College presents a two-part series spotlighting the 100-year evolution of all-male tango in Buenos Aires (1910-2010), viewed from a queer perspective.

Part one (April 12) is a presentation of spoken word and dance by Alvin Rangel of Tango Vesre and members of Dickinson’s Dance Theatre Group (DTG).

Part two
 (April 13) is a concert oftango music and dance featuring performances by guest artists Héctor Del Curto (bandoneón), Ariadna Buonviri (violin),  Donovan Stokes (bass) and faculty members Jennifer Blyth (piano) and Blanka Bednarz (violin).

For more information please check out the link to Dickinson College’s website:

http://dickinson.edu/news-and-events/events/arts/2013-Spring-Tango-Verse/

Cuba Mosaic

Cuba Mosaic

 

Also see a story and photos taken by Carl Socolow ’77 in the Dickinson magazine

 

Last spring, I accompanied a group of students and faculty on a Dickinson Mosaic in Cuba. As college photographer, I was photographing the group to illustrate the cultural and international experience that has become a hallmark of a Dickinson education. I had also been invited by Victor Casaus to exhibit a series of photographs that I had made in Mexico in 2006 as a Guggenheim Fellow. Casaus had participated in Dickinson’s 10th-annual Semana Poética last fall and is director of Central Pablo, an arts and culture organization in Havana.

Click link above to read more.

 

 

 

Indigenous Latin America week kicks off with a film by Valeria Mapelman and Phillip Cox

Trailier

 

Mbya, Tierra en Rojo, is a film that shows the ongoing struggle of the indigenous Mbya Guaraní community in northeast Argentina to gain rights for their land, receive basic social services and to be recognized by the Argentine state. The directors lived in the community for many months and got to know the community and their daily fight for survival. The film shows how the indigenous populations of Argentina are still on the margen of national consciousness and reflects the persisting colonial ideology and erasure of the indigenous identity. Through the portrayal of daily activities, relationships and universal sentiments as satisfying hunger or caring for loved ones, the film relates a personal quality to the audience that stirs compassion in the viewers and makes us relate to their situation.

 

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The second event of the week was a presentation by Hernán Ávila Montaño on the forested richly biodiverse region of the Isiboro Securé Indigenous Territory or TIPINIS in central lowland Bolivia. Hernán gave an overview of the history of indigenous mobilization and protests from 1990 up through today.  He focused on the current struggle between the Bolivian state, the TIPINIS and the interest of private corporations in constructing a highway that would run straight through the territory. In addition, it would destroy and disrupt this environment which is home to many different species of flora and fauna. 

 

Hernán explained that there were a number of marches in protest in 1990, 1996 and 2002 that indigenous communities led to fight for their land rights. Dating back to the late nineteenth century and leading up to the Bolivian Revolution in 1952, there has been an active rural and indigenous political tradition that has resisted the privatization of indigenous communal lands. Protests, ‘sit-ins’ and marches have been used in the past to fight for representation land and civil rights.

The fight continues up until today, raising questions of how to modernize Bolivia, create economic opportunities for foreign investment that will lead to  growth, however it also involves the exploitation of the land and the people who inhabit it. Below is a paragraph from an online journal that summarizes the start of the march. In 2011,

“Beginning on 15 August, lowland indigenous movements—in alliance with fractions of the highland indigenous movement, and later with the support of the urban labour movement—launched a 600-kilometre, 65-day march of protest from Beni to La Paz to prevent the construction of the highway. The march, after having been denounced by state managers as an imperialist conspiracy, and violently repressed en route by police forces on 25 September, eventually forced the Morales government to capitulate to its demands, at least temporarily.”

 

Hernán explained to us that a new constitution was established in 2009 which recognizes the political and juridicial plurality that exists in Bolivia and deemed the TIPINIS as a protected “untouchable” ecological zone. However, a law was created called, el derecho de consulta (Law of Consult) that would discuss the TIPINIS’ status as untouchable and consult the indigenous communities on the construction of the road and measures to be taken to protect the territory from be settled illegally in the future.

 

The marches from Beni to la Paz were repressed violently by Bolivian police, which caused an uproar throughout the country. The consult law also opened up national controversy over the road and the TIPINIS as it has ambiguous connotations for the legal battles to follow. Because the contract between the Bolivian government and the Brazilian companies have already been made, it is difficult to foresee how Evo Morales is going to deal with the strong rural movements throughout Bolivia.

 

 

 

 

Indigenous Latin America: October 1-4, 2012

A week of events co-sponsored by the Center for Global Study and Engagement; the Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies Program; the Office of Diversity Initiatives; the Community Studies Center; and the departments of Anthropology and History

Monday, October 1, 7 p.m., East College 405
Mbya, tierra en rojo [Mbya, Red Earth or We Are the Indians], 2008. Film presentation followed by Q&A by filmmaker Valeria Mapelman

Tuesday, October 2, 7 p.m., East College 405
Territorio en Resistencia: Indigenous Mobilization in Contemporary Bolivia. Lecture by Bolivian sociologist and social activist Hernán Ávila Montaño

Wednesday, October 3, 7 p.m., East College 405
Octubre Pilagá: Relatos sobre el silencio [Pilagá October: Tales about Silence], 2010. Film presentation followed by Q&A by filmmaker Valeria Mapelman

Thursday, October 4, 7:30 p.m., Althouse 106
Indigenous Latin America: Reclaiming the Past and Building the Future. Roundtable with Valeria Mapelman and Hernán Ávila Montaño. Co-moderated by Professor Maria Bruno and Amanda Wildey (’13) 

Valeria Mapelman  

After ten years working in photography and film in Chile, Valeria Mapelman returned to her native Buenos Aires in 2010 to co-direct her first feature-length documentary, Mbya, Tierra en Rojo [Mbya, Red Land or We Are the Indians], with Philip Cox. Filmed with the Mbya Guarani communities of the Kuña Pirú Valley, in Northeastern Argentina, this documentary presents an intimate view of the challenges faced by the Mbya Guarani to keep sustainable communities in a hostile sociocultural and political environment. Praised by critics for its complex portrayal of the Myba reality that avoids condescension, this film received the Human Rights Prize at the 2006 Buenos Aires Festival of Independent Cinema. In 2005, she began working with testimonies of survivors of the 1947 massacre in La Bomba, among the Pilagá communities of northeastern Argentina. These testimonies formed the bases of her 2010 film Octubre Pilagá, Relatos sobre el Silencio [Pilagá October: Tales about Silence] and of her collaboration with the Research Network about Genocide and Indigenous Policies in Argentina which resulted in the multi-authored book History of Argentine Cruelty: Julio A. Roca and the Genocide of First Peoples, coordinated by Osvaldo Bayer. She also produced Debates about Genocide of Argentina’s First Peoples and the Limits of Justice, an interactive DVD in collaboration with the Course on Human Rights of the University of Buenos Aires.

Hernán Ávila Montaño

Bolivian sociologist and social activist who has been working with indigenous communities of the Bolivian Amazon since 2001. From 2001-2004, as part of the NGO Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado (CIPCA), Hernán worked with the communities surrounding the town of San Ignacio de Moxos in the process of defining and legalizing their indigenous lands. In 2005, he began working with the NGO Centro de Estudios Jurídicos e Investigación Social (CEJIS) as an assistant to Miguel Peña, one of five presidents of the Constitutional Congress, in the writing the new Constitution after the election of Evo Morales which defined Bolivia as a plurinational state. He has also worked with the movement of the Indigenous Territory of the Isiboro-Securé (TIPNIS) to protest, and ultimately to stop, the construction of a paved road through this protected region. He is currently the director of CEJIS in Trinidad, where he advises indigenous groups in the Department of Beni on their defense of their territorial and cultural rights. Through this experience, he is considered to be an expert of the new Bolivian Constitution, particularly the components that define the rights and autonomy of indigenous groups to defend and determine the uses of their territories

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