BOCA TUYA — Cultural Movement Collective
YAHAIRA
YAHAIRA
An Interdisciplinary Triptych — Performance · Interview Archive · DocuDance Film
An interdisciplinary project led by choreographer Omar Román de Jesús that preserves institutional memory and chronicles political change through audiovisual recordings, a live dance performance, and a Docu-Dance film. Centered around the events at the Kennedy Center that continue to challenge both the future and memory of arts in America.
"What does it take to care about one's neighbor, one's environment, and one's past beyond an individual sense of gain?"
// THE TRIPTYCH
30 MIN / 9 DANCERS
LIVE DANCE PERFORMANCE
A 30-minute, live contemporary dance theater work for 9 dancers with an original sound score by composer Jesse Scheinin. The performance suspends itself in a waiting place — an upside down forest designated as purgatory, structured from a series of movable walls and a basketball hoop.
Both movement and soundscape were sourced from themes and text recorded during the Kennedy Center interviews. Inspired by Kathrin Linkersdorff's life-cycle art series "Fairies," the work embraces contrast as survival, meditating on how loss reshapes meaning via cycles of ruin and rebirth.
Supported in part by an O'Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation Grant and a Works & Process Technical Residency at the Adams Theater (Massachusetts).
AUG 2025 / WASHINGTON DC
KENNEDY CENTER INTERVIEWS
In August 2025, the week after the Kennedy Center's entire dance programming team was fired, members of our team traveled to Washington DC for the Alan M. Kriegsman Residency (awarded to Omar Román de Jesús) to conduct interviews with artists, administrators, and leaders about the impacts of the ongoing changes at the Kennedy Center.
Twelve interviews, approximately 1–1.5 hours each, will be preserved independently. We are currently in conversation with Sali Ann Kriegsman about archiving this work at the Library of Congress. Text and video from the interviews will be excerpted in the DocuDance film and abstracted in the soundscape for the live performance.
8–10 MIN / AUDIOVISUAL COLLAGE
DOCUDANCE FILM
An 8–10 minute, high-touch audiovisual collage developed collaboratively by Omar Román de Jesús, producer Adrianna Dufay, cinematographer Mac Premo, and composer Jesse Scheinin. The film will intersperse excerpts from the Kennedy Center interviews with follow-up footage, choreographic interludes, and animation.
Solo dance vignettes — recorded in studios, parks, and homes throughout DC and New York — thread throughout the work, combining natural, domestic, and work spaces to reflect the interconnectivity of artistic networks and how decisions at the institutional level ricochet through whole cultural ecosystems.
// PROJECT PHILOSOPHY
Our history is mobile. To promote collective consideration of our present cultural circumstances, it is essential to embrace that mobility. YAHAIRA YAHAIRA insists that bodies are archives. By situating language alongside dance as a form of physical commentary, the work relies on embodied knowledge to preserve memory, grief, and care over time.
The film is one more "body" that helps tell the story of institutional memory. Together, the triptych offers multiple modes of engagement, meeting audiences in different settings, times, and media to encourage collective contemplation.
Global harmony does not come without its frictions. YAHAIRA YAHAIRA asks us to sit in this uncomfortable waiting space. The themes of secrets, destruction, and rebuilding that appear throughout the triptych require the patience to be with discomfort — to gather ourselves, collect information, to proceed forward with thoughtfulness and connection rather than pure impulse.
Cultural memory asks for survival. We approach survival through practice, transmission, and repetition.
// PROCESS GOALS
Activate archive as a public, ongoing endeavour rather than treating preservation as cloistered and private.
Operate collectively in an environment that positions artmaking as a shared proposition between the design team, interviewees, performers, funders, curators, and audience members.
Position dance as a site of cultural investment that intersects with other media to enhance public modes of engagement.
Protect knowledge and memory while caring for artists — the key holders of our cultural heritage.
Mobilize both practice and product through residencies, rehearsal periods, editing sessions, film recording, performances, presentations, installations, archiving, and educational initiatives.
// KEY COLLABORATORS & PARTICIPANTS
// INVEST IN THIS WORK
Support YAHAIRA YAHAIRA
This project needs individual donors, institutional funders, and community partners. Your investment directly supports artist fees, archival preservation, film production, and the continuation of this work into performance and public exhibition. All donations to BOCA TUYA are tax-deductible.