A conversation with Alessandro Questa and Amanda Piña on practices of embodying the mountain in indigenous, folkloric and contemporary dance practices, thinking of Ecosomatics and choreography as tools for establishing and visualizing socio-environmental relations.
Alessandro Questa is ethnologist by the National School of Anthropology and History, holds a master in Social Anthropology by the national Autonomous University of Mexico, Master in Arts and PhD in Anthropology by the University of Virginia. He is interested in understanding various transformations and imaginaries around the uncertain futures proposed by the so-called Anthropocene. He focuses on the Ethnographic study of Indigenous ecologies at their intersection with multifarious effects of Global Climate Change as well as geo-capitalism and extractivist industry for Masewal indigenous communities in the northern highlands of Puebla, México. He explores how certain traditional dances stand as technologies to visualize and intervene socio-environmental relations.
Chignamazatl is located in the Northern Highlands of Puebla, Mexico. The Chignamazatl Mountain has been revered and embodied by Masewal populations, Nahuatl speaking, for 4.000 years. The name of the mountain translates as nine deer from Nahuatl; it is a site for offerings and the protagonist of dances which embody the mountain spirits through ritual choreographies.
This talk was published in 2021.