Peranda

MITOTE: A MANIFESTO FOR AVANT-GARDE DANCE WRITTEN IN INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of the Fine Arts in Dance with emphasis in Choreography and Performance Mills College Spring 2012 By Cuauhtmoc Peranda

Thesis Advisors:

________________________________ Sima Belmar Visiting Assistant Professor

________________________________ Sonya Delwaide Associate Professor and Chair

________________________________ Patricia Reedy Visiting Artist

________________________________ Dr. Sandra Greer Provost and Dean of Faculty

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Abstract
Applying an Indigenous perspective to conventional western scholarship, this paper proposes a dance praxis entitled Mitote, which seeks to produce an Indigenous dance process of decolonization for Indigenous liberation and empowerment. This document serves as a starting point for the evolution of contemporary Indigenous dance work that respects Indigenous land and protocols of cultural production, yet is innovative, avant-garde, and modern. Under the premise that modern dance is intimately related to traditional Indigenous dance, this project proposes a process for the decolonization of contemporary modern dance. Ultimately, it provides a means to lift the ideology of the Natives as the static past and place them into the present and innovative future. Held as a living, growing, and developing research document cataloguing this authors own artistic process, this paper is only a short beginning of a lifes work, practice, research, and creation.

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Acknowledgements
Thank you to my ancestors and to the creator. Thank you to my Danza Azteca peoples who have helped me grow and given me all of my sacred dances and knowledges. Thank you to the Pomo and Ohlone people for this land and place of study called Oaklandor Oakaztlan, as my quare/two-spirit siblings call it. Thank you to Tonanzin and Turtle Island for all of your support and dance. Writing this text has been a huge endeavor, and I first would like to thank my great friend and colleague Judene Small for her love, support, food, and dancing. She has done so much for me and has kept me sane throughout my time at Mills. She is a genuine close friendthank you! I am extremely grateful to the Mills College Dance Department, the faculty, and particularly my cohort. Working with all of them in and out of the studio, classroom, stage, and library has been an interesting, exciting, challenging, and rewarding experience, which has helped me grow and has given me the knowledge required to create this manifesto. I particularly would like to thank Ann Murphy and Sima Belmar for guiding me through this process and reading the many drafts of this work. Their help has been monumental. And, of course, a large Thank You to Patricia Reedy for reading my work, and giving me so much support and confidence. I would like to send gratitude to Katherine McGinity: you have been so great and such a wonderful friend! I could not have gotten through this last year without you, and definitely could not have written this manifesto-thesis. To Justin Solomon as well, you have been a great support from across the Bay, and your night talks over G-chat have helped me greatly in the darkest hours of the night.

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And a thank you to my mother, Amparo De Anda; she has helped me so much with all that I do. She is so proud and supportive of my research, writing, and dancing, and it is great having her with me as I work through so much in this thesis. I would like to thank my Cunningham dance technique teachers Diane Frank, Sonya Delwaide, and Molissa Fenley for teaching me all they know, and helping me discover new and old works inside the logic and knowledge of dancing. Their teachings are what inspired me to pursue this manifesto-thesis. Dancing in the studio, doing the bounces and curves, and extending myself into the deep dynamic architecture of my body have been invaluable to me. And, thank you to Shinichi Iova-Koga as well; his teachings of butoh have helped me explore the limits of technique, form, aesthetic, and art. Finally I would like to thank Maija Cruz and Logan Hehn for being such good close friends. Many times, as I was making dances and researching, they have assisted me by means of food, shelter, and transportation. Their friendship, loyalty, and support is very tender and deeply kept in my heart! A thank you to Mills College, the Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, the Graduate Student Scholarships and Fellowship for funding and supporting my work, dancing, and writingmy work could not have been completed without the great intuitional framework and supportive funding. And, thank you to my Master Thesis Dance Project dancers: Prudence Amsden, Deanna Bangs, Adrianne Cherry, Tarin Griggs, Ashley Mason, Kate McGinity, and Judene Small; your dancing has helped me write my thesis and support my passion for choreography. Thank You May you Walk in Beauty

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Table of Contents
TITLE PAGE.....1 ABSTRACT....2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..3 TABLE OF CONTENTS......5 PREFACE: Times Call for Mitote ....8 Native American placed in the past...................10 INTRODUCTION: Decolonization by Mitote .....13 MITOTE : Our Dance......17 Modern Dance & its Indigenous History.......18 TIME DECOMPRESSSION: CuauhtemocMitote ............23 MANIFESTO OF MITOTE ......26 Flag Dance.....28 Mitote, Voguing and the Dancer....29 Mitote 1..30 Mitote 2..32 Mitote 3..33 Sacred and Divine..34 Avant-Garde...35

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Dancing..37 The Traditional& the Purpose of Mitote....39 Ceremonial Time...41 Kokopelli42 Simple....43 Avant-Garde 244 Realness.45 Ode to the Native Dancer...46 Fierceness...47 Mitote Body.......47 Fierceness 248 Source49 Turtle Island...50 In a name: Mitote ......51 Decolonization...52 Training..52 Embodiment. The Sacred Practice. ...53 Choreography.53 Sacred Space..54 Choreography 2..56 Witness...56 Aztlan. Defined..57 This is an Aztec Mitote: 58

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Performance...60 Concert Dance61 CONCLUSION62 WORK CITED.....63 BIBLIOGRAPHY........65

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Mitote stops the imperial playing. It enters the sacred play and dance. It works for an honest, joyous, and respectful future.

PREFACE: Times Call for Mitote1 Playing Indian, as always, has a tendency to lead one into, rather than out of, contradiction and Irony. (Deloria, 180) The history of the United States has had a very difficult and interesting time dealing with the Indian problemor, rather, the removal of the American Indian2 from the path of Westward Expansion and Modernization.. Ethnographic research concerning the preservation of these peoples culture was put into effect as a solution, while lawmaking was used to ensure the advancement of modern civilization at the cost of genocide of Native Peoples and degradation of many important cultural practices. Yet, popular audiences of America, from the turn of the twentieth century to the present, were and continue to be fascinated by the Indians not real ones, but the romanticized characters played by white3 people. Such playing Indian was coveted by popular audiences at the turn of the twentieth century as a way to experience the so-called true savage and all his wisdom (Deloria 7). For many people of this era, playing Indian was a way to look into their own primal past and cultures, a past lost with the immigration to the North American continent; yet, most never acknowledged the humanity that existed in these Native Peoples. 1All that has come before, leads to the now, which is calling profoundly the necessary endeavor that the dance form of Mitote is created. "No artist is ahead of his time. He is time - Martha Graham
2

In this paper, Indian, American Indian, Indigenous, Indigenous Peoples, Native, Native Peoples, and Native American will be used interchangeably to indicate the first peoples of the American continents: North, Central, and or Southbut particularly of the North, and those of the United States. 3White: Not attached to race, but an absence of race and cultural heritage. (Painter)

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Playing Indian, for most, then, was a way of negotiating the beginnings of a national American identity, by attempting to reconcile the culture of the aboriginals with their own civilized ways. Interestingly, this motivation parallels the beginnings of American modern dance. By looking to the American Indians cultural dance, dance pioneer Ted Shawn created his first solo: Dagger Dance,4 which gained him a place in dance pioneer Ruth St. Denis dance company (Sherman 369). From there he made multiple other solos and group pieces by investigating the American Indian for inspiration and understanding of dance. At the time, this process of making dance was widely accepted and encouragedand looking at, imitating, and emulating other cultures to create and develop work was a common methodology (Scheckel 45). Playing Indian gives the artist creative license to act savage for his performance and not be seen as a savage himself. For Ted Shawn, playing Indian allowed him to enter the art of dance and develop his career alongside Ruth St. Denis, continuing to create the beginnings of modern dance. Paradoxically, while the beginnings of the twentieth century continued the genocide and ethnographic preservation of the primitive Indian, many performers and dancers including Shawn, explored Indian-ness to promote and popularize their art as well as to preserve the Indian way, digging deep into their assumed primitive and pure art of dance. This biased and romanticized understanding of the Indian seemed necessary and accepted for the foundational frameworks for early American modern concert dance. Without the Indian object and subject, without being an other, pushing the art form of dance in this certain expressive way: reaching ones purity of movement, may not have been socially acceptable. Playing Indian simultaneously allowed modern dance to take the stage and introduced National American
4

Dagger Dance was a small pueblo based dance about an Indian warrior and his dagger, coming into his manhood.

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culture to an art form conventionally regarded as having European origins. What is important to remember here is because Ted Shawn may have taken some dance from Native peoples, some living memories and fragments of culture of the Native peoples dance still existed through him: though an appropriation, some small reality existed in his dance.5 His and other modern dance, then, was not a full appropriationit was also an accidental preservation of Indigenous knowledge. And, it is with these fragments of culture, caught within dance, that Mitote is developed through re-appropriation and revitalization.

Native Americans Placed in the Past At fist, Native Americans were kept in the past so that the American vision of progress could be fulfilled. America as a new nation needed an understanding of nationhood, and a byproduct of this newfound camaraderie was a distant group of the others: the Indians. Indians seemed distant and exotic enough to be romanticized, the history of Indian-white relations was available as a usable past that could be incorporated into the project of imagining the nation (Scheckel 45). Indian drama was purely romantic, keeping Indians in the past so that the American image and identity could evolve into the promised, confined, and unified idealistic vision of an American future.6 As accounted by Philip Deloria, by the 1830s American imaginings of the Indian had coalesced on a common theme: the past (63), and it has remained this way for quite some time. Playing Indian encouraged people to reject the stories and language that helped structure the common sense of everyday lifeabove all, a chance to be ultimately free (Deloria 184) from the western culture and so they could run and be wild. By playing Indian, one could reject
5Mitote

begins in the Indigenous knowledge carried by the first Dance pioneers colonizers way of making their dreams into reality: Oppressing a people, to promote themselves. Mitote goes against this, promoting all those in their individuality
6The

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American societys constraints and gain the freedom of the Indian while maintaining respect from the white Western culture. New Americans only wanted an artifice reality of the first Americans, as the true people were too daunting and scarya threat to modernity, the expansion7 of America, and the use of land and minerals, as well as a constant reminder of their inhuman treatment of Indians throughout recent history. It was also during this time that new theories about the Indians were formed to justify their murder8 and preserve what was seen as a vanishing culture and peoples. For many Western scholars and scientists, ethnography was the solution to preserving the vanishing race of peoples; it also served as a way to stop imperialistic nostalgiaa melancholy longing by a people or culture for that they have destroyed (Browner 5). With these ethnographies, collection of song material, and dances captured by anthropological methodology and new technologies came the theory by ethnographer Lewis Henry Morgan called cultural evolutionary stages (Browner 6), or CESwhich states that culture can be defined linearly. With this, American Indian culture was seen to be lower or more privative than Western culture. And, it was not until the 1950s that Franz Boas anthropological work on Cultural Relativism was accepted in stating that linearity could not exist, but rather culture was defined by context (Browner 7), rendering the idea of the civilized man and the savage useless and destroying all rights to Manifest Destiny supported by CES. However, ideas of CES and the modern civilized man dominated philosophy of the time, and it was and continues to be used to validate the appropriation and use of the American Indian culture, land, and identity. 7If one simply equates Native American with the land they inhabit and were intimately tied to, it becomes clear
that we were the unknown that was to be pushed back and probed. As [an American] society, we still have not acknowledged the complete destruction of unique Native cultures that absorbed the impact of western expansion (Mithlo 54) 8America often declared war on different sovereign tribes of the Americas, in these wars, many murders and massacres took place.

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The boy knows no greater delight than to play Indian [] its nature to be an Indian in this country, so the scientists say, and the sooner imported Americans understand this the sooner the race will improve (Deloria 124)for a better more comprehensive and equal nation. The more this paradoxical dilemma is understood, the better we can do to eviscerate its existence. This is an endeavor of Mitote.

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INTRODUCTION: Decolonization by Mitote The first mission of this paper is to create a manifesto, but to achieve this, a decolonization of knowledge (facts, assertions, theory, practice, perspectives, optics) and dance must created and recognized. For this to occur, this work turns to the knowledge and statements of Kuwasi Balagoon, a New Afrikan anarchist who has stated blatantly and beautifully his love for Indigenous empowerment, liberation, and knowledge. Most importantly, he speaks to the historical and perpetual fight of Native Peoples resistance to American colonization and imperialism. Balagoon states the Native American Struggle is against imperialist occupation and that Native Americans were indeed the first victims of imperialism in this hemisphere[and] we got to accept the Native Struggle as our own (112) if we are to be present and active in decolonizing ourselves of the imperial United States of America. Balagoon speaks not only to the colonization of Native people, but includes the oppression and genocide they have had to endure over the continuing history of the occupation of the Americas. He, an anarchist, sees the imperial force of the Government of the United States as a threat to culture, survival, and prosperity of all people of color in this countrybut especially that of Native Americans. To Kuwasi Balagoon, the occupation and imperialism of the USA is the oppressive force of Native Peoples. And, as time goes on, more and more is lostmore lives, more land, more culture, more Indigenous knowledge. Yet, Balagoon states, the way to start resistance and recovery, and aligning oneself against imperialism, and for Indigenous empowerment and knowledge

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is by recognizing [the Native Struggle and oppression], your supporting land and liberation for Native Americans, youre anti-imperialist and should be in a movement that recognizes and includes that and if theres no movementwell, you got to build one (112). They are these words that make up the mainframe of the manifesto of Mitote and its decolonization. Mitote is a recognition, a movement of a political nature and of the body, though the practices of the Mitote dance. Mitote fights against the imperialist oppression on Native Peoples, and through practice of the dance it is a vehicle for the recovery and progression for Native American culture and liberation. Native Dance has been oppressed and lost through the imperialism and colonialism of the United Statesbut the kind of oppression and loss is of a static nature and non-development. Traditional dances, which contain the societal histories and Indigenous knowledges, have been oppressed and made static, with prepared punishments for their enactment. Indigenous dance scholar Tara Browner provides one example: the sun-dance and all other similar dances and so called religious ceremonies [were and] are considered Indian offences under [former and present] existing regulations and corrective penalties [were and] are provided (Browner 29). The Native people could not practice them, and thus the dances, the culture, and the paradigm of Native people were kept in the past. Prevented from continuance and innovation, the dances were cut off from their growth and development. Liberty and liberation for the Indian was kept out of reach. And, today still the dances practiced by Native People are about preservation of what has almost been completely lost. Innovation, it seems, has been left crippled, but that is not the entire case. The vision of Mitote states that modern dance is a close relative to traditional native dance, and within the development of modern dance is the development of Indigenous dance and culture.

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It is the concept of this manifesto that modern dance is not a colonizing force upon Native peoples. Though it is a part of the colonial power of the United States, it was not used in a direct oppressive way to the Native peoples (such as a replacement of native dance with modern dance). Modern dance should be seen a product of colonization, imperialism, and oppression; modern dance was not a method of colonization and it itself is not a colonization. It is a product of the colonialism of the United States, happening side by side of the westward expansion and taming of the new world. What modern dance did do was provide a force against the industrialization of imperialism. It gave new optics for the American vision on how to dance, live life, and be present in the new world. It was a necessary product for American imperialism. Modern dance achieved opening vision for America by utilizing the Indigenous Knowledge kept within the dances of the Native peoples. And it is this point that is central to the manifestothat Indigenous knowledge opened up the westward expansion so that America could understand its place, context in the new world. Modern dances fault, however, lies in its romanticization and false preservation Native formsits Playing Indian, the perpetuation of a static image and paradigm of the Native people. But, modern dances vindication is in its use of Indigenous Knowledge of innovation, new optics and ways of living, and a thriving for a more present bodyperson in their cosmic context (Sherman 367). Yet, for so long, modern dance was seen as separate from native dance. This is not the case: they are intimately familiar. There is an Indian deep within modernism. This manifesto calls it Mitote, other scholars calls it Indigenous knowledge. Historically, modern dance was a product of the revolutionary American, colonialism, imperialism, and oppression, but also of transcendentalism, Indigenous knowledge, avant-garde innovation, and traditionalism. It is fundamental and functional to realize that modern dance holds fragments of the DNA of Indigenous dance (symbolism,

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expression, history, gestures, spirit), which can be captured, decoded, and reorganized for the recreation and revitalization of Indigenous knowledge, decolonization, and empowerment. It is Mitote s vision to achieve this and recapture this light and liberation of the Indigenous peoples. Kuwasi Balagoon, in speaking about Native American oppression, states:
when the victims accept the victimizers and cease to resist, how can the victims be better off? How can anyone be better off, other than the victimizers? History shows that Greeds are never satisfied (92).

With the victimizers (the United States) greed being cultural and imperialist power over the Indian (the victim), resistance is what will create a better future: one that is better off. Decolonization is the method of Mitote it is recognition of the past and present, of compressed time in the current moment and context of our reality. But, Mitote does not end there. It continues with a re-appropriation of dance and culture: in the dancing of this new form, made out of modern dance and fleshing out the Native dance DNA memories, it re-appropriates the empowerment and liberty of the Native Peoples. This, hopefully, will lead to a sharing and equality in dance, on an equal and present playing fieldwhere Native dance is not seen as a past, or an artifact, but a living, developing, innovative, modern construct, practice, of our whole society. Mitotes full vision is one of harmony, between what is understood as what modern dance, and what is modern danceopening up optics again, to bring forth the Indigenous knowledge and liberty of contemporary dance.

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MITOTE: Our Dance There exists Indigenous knowledge in modern dance. I realize this, most profoundly, in my own dancing of modern dance. In its methods, I feel Indigenous aesthetics, logics, and history speaking through my flesh and bones. In the curves of the spine, the use of the floor, strong heavy pelvis, and the allowance for different visions of human expressiveness (the storytelling/playwriting of movement, with narrative or not), I hear echoes of my Indigenous ancestorsour knowledges, philosophies speaking through the dance, through time, to me. Though modern dance has its roots in many traditions (from ballet, European folk and stately dances, African American rhythms) and has done many things for America (providing new visions and beliefs for existence, practice of life and culture), Indigenous dance was a primary and often neglected element of the creation modern dance, along with its function and continuation. It was through the playing of Indigenous identities by the early choreographers, and use and establishment of new Indigenous-based, philosophies (with support of Delsartes system of dramatic expression (Murphy 53)), and Indigenous ideas of the body, dance, and culture that so much modernist practices came into formation. With the new proposal of Mitote, this dance acknowledges upfront its foundation, the extensive history of Indigenous people in modernist dance practices. Moreover, Mitote pushes the definition of modern dance further, claiming that modern dance is an Indigenous dance of Americathus, reclaiming Modern dance under the definition and knowledge of Native Dance. It is true that modern dance was seen as alien and different than native dance, made out of some appropriation of Indigenous dance knowledge. It is also true modern dance is a result and

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work of imperial oppression of Native Peoples. And, modern dance was definitely not formed from Native Peoples themselves in a traditional manner, but Mitote still states modern dance is a Native dance nonetheless.

Modern Dance & its Indigenous History Indians were everywhere (White 11) in the turn of the 20th century, and at this time, Americans were obsessed with the other, the Indian. And, Ted Shawn gave his audiences just what they wanted. However, for him, playing Indian was not a gimmick as it was for other performers of the time, most of whom were in Vaudeville acts; for Shawn, it was a profound study of the culture and of dance leading to his belief that Indians held the wisdom of pure and true dance. For Ted Shawn, Native Peoples, their culture, and their dances, held the key to reenvisioning the American life, opening up optics and perspectives for existence and coexistence in this new American land. Locked in the logic of the time, Shawn regarded Indians as a representation of the past, of the primitive, of the uncivilized, and their dance closer to true art than ballet or any other Western form. To him, their dance was special, and thus he romanticized it greatly, stating that their dance is not looked upon as merely amusement or entertainment or a stage spectaclebut [as] the supreme method for becoming identified with cosmic force through that identity being able to shape those forces toward the benefits of ones own tribe and self (Sherman 367). Here, we see his generalization of all Indian dances, of all tribes, into something romantic and positive.

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Yet, though he is very radical in his view of the art of dance9, not thinking it as a lower art form, he still continues to think of the people as lower culturesmore primitive and essential. Ted Shawn was a child of the west; attending college in Colorado he was exposed to many tribal cultures. Through his tours with Denishawn Dance Company, he observed many American Indian culture and dances, which he called his studies of Indian dancing upon scattered and unrelated occasions of many years (Sherman 368). He never studied the dance from the people, but watched and read what was around him and in the libraries. From his research, he created a very detached and distilled idea of Native dance in order to produce his Modern Dance form and technique. To state that Native peoples simply inspired his work peoples would be false. Rather, it was from rigorous10 study of this dance that he took what he found as essential and cosmic to these primitive Native cultures and ways of dancing to make his more perfect form: early modern dance. Ted Shawns first dance was an Indian-inspired dance titled Dagger Dance, performed in 1914 as an audition for St. Denis company; it later became a popular piece of repertory for the company. From there he created three solos and three group pieces inspired by the American Indian, with Invocation to the Thunderbird (1917) and Xochitl (1921) being his most famous. Xochitl was especially famous since it showcased the young dance pioneer Martha Graham in the lead role and included dance pioneers Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman (Sherman 370). It was Ted Shawns first large piece, and it gained much success. It was about the Aztec peoples of Mexico, and Shawn used much of his investigations of many Indian peoples dancing to create to
9

Classically, dance is not considered a high art or Fine Art the five Greater Arts of architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry, with a number of minor or subsidiary arts, of which dancing and drama are among the most ancient and universal. (Encyclopedia Britannica 344) 10Thougharigorousstudy,hisappropriationofNativecultureisnotlegitimized.Whatismeanthereisthatit wasnotshallow,superficial,amockery.Therewasadeepinvestigationandprocesswiththedeepprocess itself,abeginningofunconsciouslyaccessingIndigenousknowledgeofprocessandstriveforhonesty.

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workhis basic goal was to distill the essence of all he had seen and read in order to project to the audience the religious feeling underlying tribal technique (Sherman 368). Thus, it is important to recognize that Graham and Humphrey and Weidman carry on this method, form, and technique of dance from Shawn, which are rooted in research and study of the American Indian. It is remarkable that such a history has remained mostly uncommon knowledge and that in fact, American Indian culture and dance, romanticized or not, had a monumental influence on now modern dance. Many people loved to watch Indian dance and study the culturefor it was the boom of ethnography of American Indians and a chance to see the past. What also is remarkable is that Ted Shawn was able to create from the Indian, and not let it become too contrived, as others would have done in Vaudeville performances. Deloria stated that is due to a certain thinking: by imaging Indian Others as a kind of us rather than them, one could more easily gain access to those Indian/American qualities and make them ones own (Deloria 103). For Ted Shawn, he saw the Indians as a kind of us (him) rather than otherthus granting him great access to the arts and the creation of his techniques. Yet, his work and resulting identity was compromised, however, by political and imperial American identity that also required aggressive, exterior Indian Others who justified the violent acquisition of Indian Land, providing the reason for why this history is mostly commonly unknown. The truth, the identity of modern dance, was compromised by politics of the imperial United States. Though Ted Shawn was interested in opening up optics for dance culture by use of honest investigation of the Indian, history did not want this to be common knowledge. Mitote, however, requires these open optics to be basic understanding and knowledge.

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Dance pioneer Lester Horton, unlike Ted Shawn, was able to work with American Indians who taught him dances as well as complex chants (Warren 15) in New Mexico. And, it was from this experience and seeing the Denishawn Company perform Xochitl that he created his own work inspired by American Indians: Prairie Chicken Dance and Pueblo Eagle Dance (1929) which were also popular in his area of Southern California (Warren 28). Later, as he built methodologies to train his dancers, he used shapes and techniques brought from his work with the American Indians. Here again, more directly, we see the great impact American Indian dance and culture has on modern concert dance. However, what is most subtle and interesting is the effect both Horton and Shawn created with their work using the American Indians culture and dance. Shawn stated clearly: the art of the dance is the fundamental art of the human race and it is of greater importance that we preserve and record the authentic dance of Indians now alive than that we preserve all their other arts (Sherman 366). For Shawn and Horton, the preservation of the assumed vanishing culture is key. Yet, they did not preserve the culturefor that would have meant to allow the actual Native peoples practice their ways with freedom. What they did do was distill what they saw of Native dance into what they understood as the essence of Native dance to create their own work. In a way, their dance is a product of the colonization Indian peoples, not colonization itself, nor a true appropriation, but a slight preservation and a slight development. It is honest to state that with all they have tried to do to preserve the Native, they have done little to help the progress of Indian Peoples, but rather, kept them back in the past: static in a romantic vision of the Indian. As the prelude quotation states, Playing Indian, as always, has a tendency to lead one into, rather than out of, contradiction and Irony (Deloria 180). However, within Shawn and

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Hortons dances, there was slight development of Native Danceand it is with this slight development where Mitote begins. It is true that the American Indians have had a great influence on the beginning of Modern dance, and for that we should be grateful, and recognize this truth. Moreover, we should recognize Native peoples persistence through the genocide, and their traditions preserved (for some not all); their knowledge is the exercise of self-determination (Doxtater 625), their strength, and their love for the land.

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TIME DECOMPRESSION: Cuauhtemoc-Mitote Examining modern dance in the way described previous to Mitote yields a white, Western view of the past by a Native American dancermyself, the author, Cuauhtemoc Peranda. But, I now take all that I stated and make it more personal, more context-specific, and more Native, coming from a personal Indigenous knowledge conscious place. I now open up this history to the present moment and find a strong reason for why I write this account of history: to move forward with my own dance reality, context, worlda futurity of native dance, that being: Mitote. To state that Ted Shawn and Lester Horton did nothing to preserve Native People is false. Though Shawn and Horton did not preserve true traditional dance through promoting Native Peoples right to dance, they did preserve a significant artifact through their work: Indigenous Knowledge. For now, in this contemporary time, when I dance modern dance, when I, a Native American Body, dance that which was taken from my people, I re-appropriate the form and knowledge, I decolonize it:
Decolonization is the process of revealing and dismantling colonialist power in all its form. This includes dismantling the hidden aspect of those institutional and cultural forces that had maintain the colonial power and that remain even after political independence is achieved (Ashcroft 63).

Shawn and Horton provided something from my people, through their dance, for me to find. When I as a choreographer, use the form to push myself, the art, my dancing, I take all that my ancestors have given to me in terms of my wholeness11 and push Native American Dance into the 11Mind,body,spirit,history,context,place,geography,bones,flesh,DNA,breatheallthatwhichisme,
morethanmyselfasaperson,butallmyrelations,allmyrelationships.

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future by dancing modern dance. To dance what Shawn has passed down to his students, dancing Modern Dance as a Native American, is a Decolonial processit is the resolution for the history of this dance form. I have, for long time, contemplated the subject of a Native body doing modern dance, and I had wondered why I have always had a love for it, especially Cunningham technique. This is especially curious to me, since I was first brought up as a very traditional Native American Dancer, who was trained and blessed though the Aztec Dance Circles and Practices. Yet, it was once I found this often ignored history of modern dance that it became very clear to me why I had this affinity. Modern dance is the dance of my peoples. In modern dance, there is kinetic memory12 stored away, messages, from my past, telling me something, notes to the future, to me, to dance as my ancestors could notfor they would have otherwise faced murder. Ted Shawn and Lester Horton may not have realized what they were carrying or passing on, but they were holding notes to my fellow Native contemporary dancers and me. Shawn and Horton did not preserve Native Dance in the way they suspected, by playing Indian and preserving what they saw as traditional dance; rather, by creating Modern dance out of my peoples Native Dance techniques, they provided basic kinetic memory of my people for me to learn. Looking at the history of modern dance, we can track how direct my peoples dance came to me. We see that Ted Shawn observed Native American dance closely to create his work, as did every other pioneer interested in transcendentalism and primitivism; turning it into innovation and modernism were keen subjects for many first modern dancers. From him came Martha Grahamshe carried on the Native Dance of Shawn with her, and developed it with her own psychological dance (influenced by her father, a psychologist). Her technique was deeply rooted in her own training from Ted Shawn (a teacher whom she always loved and respected),
12

A kind of Indigenous Knowledge.

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but also in her own mind, her Freudian research into her womanhood, and the power of her physical core, torso, and connection to the earth. These principles, toocore, connection to the earthare very Native ideologies. So even in here, we see the cross pollination of Native dance and Western thought to create modern dance. From Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham took the rigorous use of the core, the torso, and added the furious legs of ballet to create his work yet a lot of his technique kept the low center of gravity to control this core work. And, his technique varied the ballet vocabulary in a very directional and planar way, following mathematical patters and shapes that resonate deep with Indigenous Knowledge. His work, too, can be seen as anti-psychological, anti-narrative, anti-anything but movementa distillation of the dance again (like Shawn), back to its essentials. And, it is here a pattern is realized Native dances full symbolism, distilled by Ted Shawn, then filled with psychological work by Martha Graham, and distilled down to its movement basics, again, by Merce Cunninghamand then, I, as I dance modern dance, return it back to its symbolic meanings by recognizing what these movement are, in my relation to this modern form, to my traditional training

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. .. ..MITOTE . ...

THE MANIFESTO OF MITOTE

The creation of Mitote is motivated by love.

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Note: This Manifesto is written in a non-linear fashion. It is created out of many small essays, stories, poetics, and theories to create an overall sense and feeling, knowledge of Mitote. Thus, as the reader, you do not need to read this work linearly. Please feel free to look at the table of contents and follow the logic and path of reading that best suits you. Though there is logic to the arrangement of following works in this document, it is more of a guide, an order. This work was created for you, the reader, to hold agency over your reading and exploration.

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Flag Dance In third grade, my mom told me not to stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance ceremony every child does daily in most American schools. She told me it was bad, and a wrong thing to do. She did not believe in America, and she did not believe in pledging oneself to this country. So, I went to the class. In the morning, the other students stood, and said the pledge. I sat, and waited for the minute to pass. My teacher was confused and angry, the students surprised at my defiance. This act told them, as a Native Person, that I could not pledge alliance in this way, it was against who I was as a personagainst me, my family, my community, my blood, my history. Anarchy13 it seemsIt was pushing forth in me. But, the true, deep fact was, I would not pledge allegiance to a country that continues to tries to murder me. A country built on the genocide14 of Native peoples, and continues to try to kill us off, to take our land15, our resources, and chooses not to realize our humanity, our passions, our intelligence, and our culture. When I look at the American flag, at times I see a great thing, but most of the time, I see the flag of doom, of death. I think of all of my ancestors who lay dead, under the shadow of this flag. I think of all the native peoples feet that were cut off for dancing, under the rule of this flag. I think of all the pain, the suffering that continues on the reservations, continuance of colonization that occurred so many and few years ago, not even 100 years have we native people been considered human under the law16, under this flag. And so, still I do not pledge allegiance, for how can I be aligned with this country? I am a part of it, I am a citizen, but I do not truly align myself with it. I align myself with the truth, and of the past, that, one day, justice will come. And, we will all be able to dance17 in shared peace, looking at our past with tears, but into our future with smiles. That, one day, the American People, and its Flag, will honor Native People, not as just another kind of person, past, or deceased race, but Americas History, Americas Past, and Americas present and future.

Through personal story, personal narrative, we see raw material, raw theory. This experience expresses the lived colonization of a Native Boy in the late 20th Century, in his public schooland the beginnings of his resistance. This, a memory, broken and studied is a fragment of perpetual Indigenous knowledge to fight for ones empowerment.

13) Anarchy in the sense of revolting against the imperialist structure of the educationmore than anything disidentifying with the school, resisting further colonization, and deciding actions for myself. A start at Mitote. (Balagoon) 14) Genocide has been a main tactic of colonization for a very long time. Still today, with Blood Quantum, a governmental determination of what percentage Native blood or heritage is inside a Native person is considered genocide by many Indigenous Scholars. (Balagoon 91) 15) Land: To many Indigenous peoples, land, the natural world, environment, or creation [in general] is an essential part of the conception of Indigenous knowledge (McGregor 390) and Indigenous identity. To destroy land is to kill the Indian, the Indigenous knowledge stored in place. 16) The 1924 Indian

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When we begin to honor Native Peoples, we being to honor ourselves, we begin to honor America; and only then will I honor this new, washed, revitalized flag of the futureonly then, only then may it have my honor18.

Citizenship Act was the first time Native people were considered full people, and it became institutionally unlawful to kill them. Until then, the killing of a Native person was not completely considered murder. 17) Dance in its most vague and exuberant definition of moving with people, being with people. 18) Honor, giving, respect, love, devotion, acceptance as a part of myself, and not a colonizationself integration into society as a wholeno longer considering myself an other.

Mitote, Voguing, the Dancer. Voguing19 is: a Triangulated Synchronous Conversation, with a movement technique built out of an improvisatory method with the goal of one's vindication via one's Quare20 fierceness21 in relationship to the dances witnesses22. Mitote: Internal Fierceness: Body23 Intelligence and Memory leading to dancing. "The movement material is unimportant, the steps will come. (Your technique is there) But what is your journey, what is the relationship, you context, your presence-being, stillness? What is the ceremony24? What is the ritual25? What is the performance? Then, what are the stepsthey have always been there. Mitote values: Strength, Power, Calm, Sensitivity, Honor, Trust, Care, Risk, Intelligence, Goals, Passion, Excellence, Rest. Some very important aspects to a professional dancer26. To really be focused, to really be in control of one's body--NO, to be in control of one's self, to be one complete person, dancing with the body, the full body, at every moment, all synchronously speaking, expressing, dancingbeauty.

19) Vogue/Voguing is a dance form of the Ball Subculture, invented in the 1940s, in the underground gay clubs of New York, and is now practiced in most major cities by Black and Latina/o Queer People. 20) Quare: theoretical concept from E. Patrick Johnsons Quare Studies proposal that queer moments do not exist outside of racial and ethnic, and class contexts. 21) Fierceness: a mode of performance builds upon extroverted self-confidence, acceptance, fabulousness, and consciousness. (Peranda) 22) Witness: in this context, a witness is more than a passive audience member, but an active participant in the actions that are put forth in the moment of

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performance. Their seeing, response, and internal subjective experiences are intrinsic to the event taking place. 23) Physical fleshy form, filled with proprioceptors that react and experience the external world in order to form meaning. (Johnson 5) 24) Ceremony: any event in a sacred place and time, with particular rituals and protocols. However mundane the task, it can be ceremonial: washing of the body, laying the deceased to restare all profoundly ceremonial (Anzalda 88). 25) Ritual: done in accordance with a social custom or normal protocol (Webster) 26) A dancer who is paid to dance, even more so, a person who has made their lifes work: the performance, artistry, study, and expression of dancing.

Mitote 1 Mitote is a Dance form. It is a Choreographic Process. It is a way of living. It is a way of expressing27. It provides an avenue for creation, critique, analysis, and discovery. It has a certain Mitote body, from which dance is created. It has specific training to undergo and continuethere is praxis of Mitote. This requires rigorous study. Excellence is a goal, continuously. Perfection is never achieved. Ideals are experienced and produced. There is an idea of utopia28, as long as dystopia can also exist. To witness Mitote is not an easy task, it is an active artistic and communicative, ceremonial process.

27) Expression: as a way to communicate ones ideas with others.

28) Utopia: A place where people can come together, embodied and passionate, to

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Mitote is the art of the now. Mitote is avant-garde. Mitote is traditional29. Embodiment30 is key: mind, body, and spirit as unified. Fierceness is keyself-understanding-awareness and courageousproject are its tools. Beholding31 oneself, internal research in the beginning of all the process, relationship to the external, the current, the future, and the past is the present and end of the process. All work is not made for now, or before, but for later, for the future32: for time infinite. Mitote is what happens when we dance wildly. Mitote is what happens at the ballet barre, right after you just rolled out of bed. Mitote is the Cunningham bounces33 small dance34. Mitote is your dreams35. Mitote is a theory, a practice, a thing, and a living thing that happens as you happen, as you exist. Mitote is you, brought to life and realization. It is you existing, pushing through your dreams, into reality. Using all that you have, your house, your body, your mind, your spirit, to create dance work, work, werk36, which is about all of us. Mitote is dependant on the bodies that dance it. Mitote is not just choreography. Mitote is not just training. Mitote is not just a performance state. Mitote is not just a process. Mitote is not just a way to take in work. Mitote is not just a discussion or a communication. Mitote is the ceremony of art performance which allows us to find our most inner humanity, burst it out in light, love, and giving; so that we can be ever more human, ever more peoples, ever more in our dreams, ever more sustaining who we are as people, ever more beautiful37.

share experience of meaning making and imagination that can describe or capture fleeting intimations of a better world (Dolan 2) 29) Traditional--Native: that which has, for a long time, been practice in the same way, by a certain genealogical decadence. Often, pre-colonization, or adapted with colonization. Also: non-western, noncontemporary. 30) Embodiment: What we call mind and what we call body are not two things, but rather aspects of one organic process, so that all our meaningis an embodied process (Johnson 1) 31) Beholding: To see without judgment, with objectivity and kindness, opennessto see what is for what it is. 32) The future is that which is not here, an unknown, an empty void with is bound to be filled. Our children ARE the future, thinking continually, rather than progressivelyonce we are gone, we are survived by our young. 33) An exercise at the beginning of a Cunningham dance class, which stretches the back by curving the upper back forward in space. (Cunningham) 34) If you stand still, and just exist, you will notice, in order to be alive, stand tall, live, you must move. These minute movements are you small dance. (Novak 61)

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35) Sleep dream-state and aspirations, both exits from subconscious, and intuitions, moreover, your individual self. 36) WERK: Ebonics word with similar definition to work but does not indicate labor. Its meaning is locked in performativity: Using one embodiment in pursuit of joyful performancecreation of the self in an extroverted manner. 37) May you walk in beauty: Navajo Prayer: beauty as a state of peace, calm, and balance understanding all is naturally beautiful profound, organic.

Mitote 2 A Decolonizing/Decolonial Dance: Mitote: believe in all that is dance, all is dance: not utopia, not ideals, but what is present. Behold: the naked, unadorned dancingthe naked, unadorned choreographythe unadorned self, body, spiritthe ever present, brought forefront. Mitote is a new dance form. Like those before it, it has a certain technique. Like those before it, it has a way to make dance: choreography, composition, scoring. Like those before it, there is a way to perform itthe dancers task. Like those before it, it has a way to see it, so that one can comprehend what is presented. Like those before it, it has a certain body in mind, to dance it. Unlike all those before it, its interest is not in uniformity38in that way, its cousin can be said to be butoh39but they are not related by blood40. Its source is ones decolonization, ones place of light41, ones
38) Uniformity is often requested and required for older concert dances of the west, such as Ballet. Example: the uniform Swans, or the required

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internal self, archive, and artifacts. Bringing that stuff42 to the forefront requires 1 thing: fierceness. The choreographer is uninterested in uniformity. The choreographer is interested in Mitote, in fierceness, in movement. Movement flows from the choreographer, and it is set in that moment of flow, in that moment of time, to then be set on stage, on the dancers. The dancers task is to make that dance material, that movement, theirs, done with their internal stufffierceness. Dance material leads to more dance material. Music does not guide the dance, it partners the dance Costume does not guide the dance, it partners the dance.

Ballet Woman body 39) Butoh, the Japanese dance of darkness, has no required, or predetermined rules for the body or way it is doneits non-definition is its art. (Ohno) 40) Butoh is Japanese, and Mitote is very much Aztec/Native American. Though they are similar, Mitote s origins are different, and thus, there is little intrinsically in common with them. 41) Inner light: essence: a safe place, ones perspective, home in side your flesh and mental space. This is your sprit. (De Certeau)

The experimental is the body. Mitote is highly conscious of the body and its wisdom is the focus of 42) Stuff: unarticulated material for which ones this work.
language of personal expression is made into dance.

Mitote 3 This dance form is born to fill in a need to make a dance form, style, choreographic process, that is built on a contemporary Native American process. Thus, it is built on ancestors of this earth43, both blood related and not so much. This is my dance, my pure dance. Unadorned, simple, and yet layered with history and time. As if one could dance all night in the club, and put it on the stage, and let wonders occur. Mitote dancers will be fierce, powerful dancers, of brilliance and control of their instrument. Images and concepts, used by the dancers to complete make the movement material their own, take it, mix it with them, and create something new. Mistakes, pitfalls, failures, and new radical shifts are necessary. The theory of Mitote is simple: Modern dance stored Indigenous
44) Indigenous knowledge

43) Ancestral Memory: genetic continuity and the fact that the immense majority of you have somatic traits is a place of accessing history, which is encoded into our being.

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knowledge of the Native Peoples, and By use of Mitote, we take it back, by moving forward with both dance histories, both dance embodiments.44 The theory attached to this work is supportive of ideas of the manifesto. There is a call for decolonization of writing45. As artists, as artist-scholars, as artist-scholar-warriors, this is how the call is answered. I create my Mitote, and though witnessing, we bring our dreams to reality. We must learn first how to die How to be unadorned. Dead on stage, before we can be truly alive! So that we can re-examine the meaning of our life and grow in our human experience.

is not simply a product or a commodity; it is a process (McGregor 391)

45) Decolonize writing: putting more purpose on the page than just words or theory, but there is reality being made, some truth, a deep knowledge. The ancient and traditional use of writing, as if creating a codex, more than a history, more than a re-account, but a creation all on its own.

Sacred and Divine The world as we know it is built off a lot of social constructs46 which are repeated over and over again. We then think these social constructs are law, are inherent, and are what is supposed to happen. We then institutionalize these inherent laws, and we function around themthey were completely invented by us, not the world. Mitote, Coyote47, the trickster, the Avant-Garde, breaks laws. He is the only one with the power to break laws The sacred, the divine, Natural Law, these have been, and are explored by the Arts and Sciencesas we humans are able to understand and perceive them. The sun is hot, water will float upon itself in a solid form, the earth contains nutrients and minerals, and there is a cycle of life and death interrelationship, and sex and reproduction. Love is a law, the law of attraction of massesphysics, emotions,
46) A social concept. Ideology, or practice of a certain group of people: artifactmaterial or not.

47) The coyote is a scared, legendary animal to most native tribes. To the Aztecs, he is the scared symbol of cleverness, the arts, trickery, and reproduction. He is also known as Huehuecoyotl and Kokopelli.

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one Your heart is a heavy mass48, it attracts others. That is the limit to the law; all the rest is human construct. The sacred and divine are simple. Stay in the simple. Through it, we get the epicthe Mitote .the wisdom of Huehuecoyotl.
48) Think of your hearts emotional power in relationship, parallel, to the laws of classic physics. Because, it has mass, it has gravity and pulls other masses to it. The heaver or more experienced it is, the mover gravity or love it has, respectfully. And, thus, the more it will be able to attract others.

Avant-Garde49 This word, avant-garde, is very curious. Perhaps that is exactly what is so Avant-Garde, so experimental, perplexing, so...Mitote. Avant-Garde, as it has been used and defined, is something that pushes perception, innovates, experiments, plays, and bend, breaks rules. It is the ultimate way, for a given time and context, to go an opposite way of the status quo, or turn it upside down, smash it, reconstruct, deconstruct, and present it. It is a colossal play and a mess of our most adult and sociological norms. And, it expresses our humanity, us, our society, by challenging it, or revealing it. Naked. Unadorned with social protocol or conditioning. Avant-garde is western aesthetic term, here Mitote, an Aztec term, echoes its meaning. Let there be an introduction to Mitote: an Indigenous Avant-Garde. In the times before Columbus and Cortez, before Western influences and colonization, Native American societies had many rules and social regulations. But also, a very important traditional view, commonly shared among many Native peoples was: the Coyote, the Mitote.

49) Here is a definition for Avant-Garde. It is also a recreation of a definition in the use for describing Mitote.

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The Coyote, the idea of it, the Indigenous knowledge of it, is the backwards. That is to say, that to act on behalf of coyote is to go against the status quo. But, this was a positive50 thing, this was ceremonial, and this was allowed. Rather, more so, it was a sacred act; the community sponsorship of play. For the Hopi it was the clownKoshare. For the Lakota it was Heyoka. For the Aztec it was Huehuecoyotl. And, for the Southwest America it was Kokopelli51 For the purpose of this work, we will focus on the traditional ties on Kokopelli/Huehuecoyotl to examine Mitote. Mitote is a revisiting to this ancient knowledge and way of working, way of being, and a way of being traditional. By being Mitote, by making it, by creating it, in essence, we are being, making avantgarde. * Mitote is everything avant-garde is. But, it is traditional52. And, that is where it begins. One must look inside them, and bring it forthnot in something conventionally done. Mitote is honoring our past, ourselves, our presentwhat is kept in usthis is the method. The act of bringing forth, light53, in its raw is Avant-Garde, is Mitote, and is coyote. Mitote has a creation process similar to peyote ceremony. In doing it, you get well54. Through the ecstasy of Mitote dance, we bring up all our insides so that the world and we can get well. Mitote Mitote Mitote To dream, to create, out of us, and leave it as that. Investigating us. Creating us. Creating a world.

50) Positive: not necessarily good, but, more-so, promoting balance. So, possibly doing something bad, but keeping in the confine that balance is the ultimate goal, and self, community reflection occurs. 51) An Aztec name, another version, form, name, state of Huehuecoyotl.

52) Traditional: an aspect of life, which is maintained to certain protocols. Normally, it is something static, and does not innovate itself.

53) The material by which something is made of out of something. It is the pure still and empty self. Warm and giving, gushing forth, light. 54) Getting well: often means vomiting, throwing up, or going through some battle to gain strength and health.

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Ours. Sharing, giving thanks. All of us. Harmony.

Dancing To dance Mitote. Simply by occupying space and dancing. On stage, in class. Aware and conscious and acknowledging that the art is ones presence55: life, dancing. This is what Mitote is. It is attached to self. Mitote is attached to you and you alone.56 It is the moments of light. It is dancing your dreams into reality. How do we do it? One must be ready to be yourself. That is the training of Mitote. Coming to oneself with freshness and beholding, loving all one is, and using the minimum to achieve the maximum. Efficiently. All you are as you are now is all you need to be. In the future, future time, all you want to be, can only come into place as you work with yourself to achieve it. This very anti-consumerist, anti-utopian, anti a lot of American57. Very Native58.. Kind of transcendentalist59. But not transcendence. Not beginner60. Not discovery61.
57) America is a capitalist society, and is very idealistic in its process. The pursuit of utopia is often its modern idealbut Mitote does not choose this path. 58) Native here is being used as other, being not American at its essence. That the people are more aliened with the Natural, organic Order rather than ideals.

55) Presence is a performance and a performativity. It is the ephemeral reality of being, in a context, while simultaneously acknowledging it. It is the production of ones image (De Certeau xiii) 56) Mitote goes beyond the Native ideas; it is attached to the artist. Though born from Native traditions, it can transcend this birthplace by being practiced by conscious people of other heritages

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But remembering, realizing, acknowledging, breathing, beholding, doing All that you are, you have been. All that you will be you are. You just need to see it, and activate it! Live it, dance it, and make it real.

59) Transcendentalist: Again, back to the Natural Order of the world. 60) Beginner: Not fresh, but acknowledge the past, reverse of Suzukis Zen. 61) The concept of discovery is very colonialist. To state that something has not been there before one sees it, names it, and owns it is silly to Mitote. Sacred Space acknowledges that which is known and that which is knowingly unknown.

The dancing of Mitote can bless space. Intrinsic in it is a duty, it fulfills it the space it inhabits with art, blessing the space for future dance, for more art, for more expression and light. Its done in the moment for the moment62 As it is danced, it activates the light, the internal force of power, and the body ready and willing The idea of selfhood and spiritual connection to time and space is evoked. Mitote. To look at dances internal codes: Cunningham: Dance is Time, Space, and Force. Dance Mitote Time, space, and force. All contexts. Less random, more situated. Non-narrative, non-plot. Completely human. Narrative. Completely indeterminately63 improvisational64 The score is set. The improvisation is there. Back and forth?65 For what purpose To live! This is modern dance. No! This Is Mitote. To live That is the fight, that is the warrior in us,

62) Dance is a decaying art, as it is done, it is disappeared in the past. Because time only goes forward, nothing can be repeated perfectly the same ever againit is the temporal reality of dancing.

63) Chance and randomness, determined by the chaos of natural universe (Cage). 64) Determined by intuition and internal consciousness. That which is composed extemporaneously, on the spur of the moment (Foster 3) 65) Oscillation

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The artist, the scholars Scholars of an oral tradition Of oral literature. Of oral text. So oral, it has no sound or words. But, it does indeed have action. So, there is a kinetic66 tradition. Not even. Kinetic. Kinesthetic text. We are Kinesthetic Scholars67.. Yes. That is the dance of Mitote Kinesthetic scholarship.
67) People who study movement, choreography, performance, and bodies, see them as artifact of our past, our existence, in order to better understand our place in the world, and define our context of now, and the future.

66) Physical, movement, pattern.

The Traditional & the purpose of Mitote. This is your way in. To Mitote, Native Dance tends to keep itself in the past; it stays in, and promotes itself with this idea of the traditional. The Pow-wow, Sacred dances, and all the rest of it, can only be made valid68 if the community sees it as a traditional form. Following certain protocols, approved by the correct elders. This traditional, however, is a very limited view and ideology of what traditional can beand few Native people are brave enough to disagree or challenge it. Yet, understanding; there is a very important purpose to the traditional. Native People of the United States of America, and of the Americas, have been killed, burned, kicked, raped, and mutilated for practicing their traditional arts: arts and cultures of their elders, of their Indigenous knowledge69, of their respect and honoring of their

68) Valid and Acceptable are key terms in Native Societies. Because of so many false representations of what native is from a long history of playing Indian, Native people have had a hard time defining who and what they are. 69) Indigenous knowledge

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daily lives, the worldof being themselves. So, we find what we can after the first ruins of colonization70 (because it continues), and try to pick up where the interruption, beginning of colonization, started and keep this idea of the past as scared, as before the white man, sacred, as in keeping traditional, so we know who we are. It is very important to keep who we are, to research our past, and integrate it into our future. However we are missing a huge part of the idea of traditional: that it innovates, that it changes, it allows itself to be present and contemporary, and pushes us into the future. Staying in the past is a very white71 viewpoint. Christianity and other ideologies that integrate themselves into the societies wholeness72 and keep thinking of the past as different than present or future. This is tragic and sad to the Native73 person, who sees in a horizontal manner, in a circular manner, rather than so linear. Rather than practicing old practices and scriptures, for the Native Person, the stories, knowledges should be allowed change, and evolvethis is the practice, the scared divine fact of our oral traditiona praxis that is deeply rooted in Indigenous knowledge74. Death and decay of knowledge is part of the practice, for it must happen in order for it to renew itself. In the Native world, there is this idea of innovation within tradition. For Western world, this is often labeled the Avant-garde, or new-, or neo-, or modern-, or something, which expresses pushing forward. In the Southwest Native culture, that with which Mitote is closely affiliated, there is the idea of Coyote, or for the Aztecs: Huehuecoyotl. The Deity75, king, symbol, idea, practice of Huehuecoyotl is the keeping of songs, dance, arts, and traditions, yet knowing these symbols are also a trickster. He plays around, and innovates, does things wrong in order to challenged and push what is rightensuring that we stay current, respecting the past, but creating for the future, being ever present It is here, in presence that Mitote comes ina dance form that is about contemporizing the traditional. It is a traditional form, built on my own traditional Indigenous ideologies of balance, land, tradition, symbolism, and because of this, it can also be seen as a Decolonial practice. To play in Mitote is to play about oneself in order to remember, to create, and promote oneself into future time. Decolonize us from the oppression of colonization and appropriation. Pushing forward into future time. And, slowly breaking ties of Traditionally and other toxic ideas of blood quantum76, and institutionalized Indigenous valid Identity our contemporary genocideso that we may be more balanced, truly, complete, traditional and contemporary Indigenous people.

cannot be separated form the people (McGregor) 70) The European peoples taking over the Americas via force, destruction, tragedy, and their idealism.

71) White: Not attached to race, but an absence of race and cultural heritage. (Painter) 72) Wholeness: Mind, Body, Spirit, family, land, context, place, time, and space particular ones attachment, the attachment, to everything. 73) Here, the differentiation between white and Native is here not expressing race, rather it is expressing colonizer absence of race and colonized the race which was here, primary, on America. 74) Indigenous scholarship argues against the homogenizing Euro-master narrative that seeks to colonize Indigenous Knowledge, it must remain fluid, oral, performative until it sifts to a practice cultureonce decolonized (Doxtater 620) 75) Deity: not necessary a God, in a pantheist sense, but, but a symbol of the world, with a spirit and life. A living aspect of our world that gives yields itself to be

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able to communicate with our emotive and intuitive capacities. 76) Governmental records of the Native American population by calculating percentage of pure blood of ones tribal affiliation. Plastics cards given out by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Ceremonial Time When preparing for a ceremony, it is important to realize, there is a time to start, a set duration, and a set time to end. Also note, there is a reality known as Indian Time, or Native Time which is a type of Sacred Time, a kind of Ceremonial Time. The rule is: It will happen when It needs to happenit will take as long as it needs toit will continue, end as it sees fit. The idea that everything happens for a reason is method for this use of Time. Moreover, it, the event, is seen as a living thingthus we must respect its issues, its program, its time, its space. Mitote is an event. It is a thing, it is a dance, and it is alive. It runs on ceremonial time. It happens, as it needs to. It is not a machine. It cannot be industrialized. Respect is centralbe true to the time necessary for it to be made and completedlet it breathe and live. Sacred time reveals to us that there are cycles; and that those things, which happen over extended time, are necessary for the event of Mitote. John Cages work, 433, could be seen as ceremonial time. It is a snippet of a cycle, it is a moment to rest and observe time. Mitote is this. They are rests77; they are cycles, to be ever more present75 in our world.

77) Rests. To sleep. To Dream. To experience. To be present 75) of what is in the world, with consciousness and acknowledgement. The active doing of this, is the active dance.

Kokopelli
78) Two-Spirit: a person who

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Huehuecoyotl is the Aztec name of the old coyote. He is a TwoSpirit78. He is the maker of the flute79an instrument of male and female energies. He is the keeper of dance. He is the keeper of knowledge80 and stories. He was a person, in time, in the past. He was a merchant, and what he sold and traded were the Aztec flutes those made of clay, and those made of cedar. The flute is a masculine instrumentvery phallic in naturebut its song is soft, and femininethough could be lower and tone, and boisterous. The flute is a two-spirit. Should a young man wish to court a female, he would have to woo her with a sweet song from a flutethis was traditional. He would have to be strong to be given the flute by the coyote, but soft enough to play ita true gentleman, using his wholeness, by way of the focus the flue give his very own dual-energy. A female could also play the flute, the process is similarshe must be strong, she must be soft, and the flute will sing. Kokopelli would train her. Kokopelli would train him. Coyote would teach one how to make love, make music, and dance the dance of sacred sexual intercourse. This was the wisdom of Huehuecoyotldivine creation, divine artssacred art of make81. Kokopelli is his other name, it is his human form: it is legendary across the southwest native peoples. Coyote is his common name: that is his ancient animal form, the form he took before turtle island came into existence. Huehuecoyotl is his first name, that is his sacred form: this is a half-coyote-man form, the protector of Aztlan, the spirit of the ephemeral, decaying arts within time, the keeper of knowledge, the holder of the sacred make, creation, recreation specifically for us, human peoples of this lands. He, this dog82, is our companion through life.

posses both male and female energies. Also: queer person. Also, Quare Person of Native American ancestry. Transgendered, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, etc Native person. A keeper and regulator of male and female energies. 79) The Aztecs were the first tribe to create the clay flute. It, with it sweet and bold sound, was said to hold the 2 essential energies. It was traded across the Americas, and can be traced to central America, the Aztecs and Maya. 80) The traditions of the people, he protocols, he cultural customs, the relationships to the environments, keeper of contextual interactions and history. 81) Indigenous Knowledge is not just knowledge per se. It is the lives lived by the people and their particular relations with Creation (McGregor 390)

82) The Xoloitzcuintle, the hairless dog of the Aztec people, with a face similar to that of humans, and no hair, similar to the humans, is the ancient symbol of a companion and friend.

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Simple To dance this dance. To dance Mitote. To Mitote is to existat its most basic level. A level up from there, is to engage with your past, your ancestors. A level up from there, is to engage with yourself. A level up from there, is to engage with your colonization. A level up from there is to engage with your society. A level up from there, is to engage with the dance material. A level up from there is to go to sleep, and dream what could and can. And the last level, the highest of all, is the future: making those dreams a reality--which cannot ever be reached. Though to practice Mitote, we start from the highest level, and work down.83 Future What is to come? Who will we? What? Unknown84? Dreams Night sleep. Aspirations. Wants, desires, needs.

Dance Material Phrases, movements, technique, choreography85, stage, lights, music, sound 84) What is unknown is just Society Mother, family, cousin, ancestors, states, country, county, water, trees, hummingbirds86 & animals. Social norms. Ideas. Expectancies87. Colonization Habits, depression, negativity, pain, taught joy, unauthentic self88, vague ideas, veneers, masks, indoctrination, industrialization, cookie-cutter, the false, the clone. You Your body, your mind, you soul. Your history, your experiences, your happiness, your sad, your beautiful, your sexy, your fierceness. Your authentic self, your freedom. Your confidence. You. Your ancestors

83) Mitote sees what is up and what is down in relationship to the natural: The sky is above, and the earth is below. What is important in this Indigenous knowledge is that neither is better, higher or more important than the other. So when we work from the highest to the lowest, what is being stated is: that one works from the more abstract, to the more physical and real: from dreams to the flesh. And, back up again. This circular logic lies on a horizontal planethe horizon. what will be known, it is an expression of time: that in time, what is not understood, will be. It exists, it is not absent, and it is there to be revealed to us, given to us. 85) A choreographic phrase[will] convey feelings, images, ideas, to present visual impressions, a story, symbol, [and/] or design element (Blom 30) 86) The Hummingbird is one of the most sacred animals to the Mexica People. It is, a living representation, symbol, of The Creator himself.

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Turtle Island, land, nature, Nature, your and ancient religion (which does not colonize you any more, but looked upon without judgment and with objectivity). Your language, your knowledges, your placement. Your context. Existence The nothingness, the everything. The minimum, the maximum. Balance. Movement. Time and Space. Energy: Force.

87) What we expect, what other expect from us, are often colonization, and not our true desires, dreams or aspirations. Society has a good way of making us do as it pleases by means of expectations. 88) The unauthentic self can be described as a clone (Sycamore 4), or an expectation to be someone you are not. A trying to be anything and everything but who you are. A trying to be a repetition of anything else

Mitote

Avant-Garde 2 Mitote is Avant-Garde. Coyote is Avant-Garde. Avant-Garde is to push, to play, to challenge, to experiment, to queer89. This not to say it is ridiculous. Rather, it is the black to the white, or perhaps the white to the blackit is the contrast to that which necessitates contrast to exist. If the world is ordered one way, then the coyote does the opposite, so that we may see the world in the other way, so that we can see the world in it entirety, so that we may behold the world, and live an ever more full90 life. It seems there is a trend to not like the body, flesh, naked, nude, all it could be. The trend is to not like individualismin terms of expression. America tends to like industrialization, colonization, and sameness91. Embodiment, fierceness, beholding, sacred lands, sacred space, sacred timeis an experiment in our perception of our reality. At the same time, it is traditional, and is our reality. The Avant-Garde, lets us play with what we have socially constructed, so that we may see both sides of the coin so that we

89) Queer: In this instance, to make strange, to go against the norm. But, as a word, it also resonates with the LGBT peoples, and currently, in this moment of the US, they are somewhat Avant-Garde, as is dance, as is Mitote, all in dissonance with the status quo. 90) A full life, is a complete life. Not just the good, but also the bad, everything, all seen, all of it, nothing left unseen or numbed. 91) A common claim of how imperialism and capitalism works and manages their industrialism. (Balagoon)

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may see the coin. Perhaps, then, maybe, Mitote is not an experiment, Avant-Garde. It is an artifact92it is the trickster93it is the truth teller through a queer twisting of reality, perception. Though the doing and play of anything, he shows what is, ever more so To dance, to do, is to makedone into reality. Coyote is this divine maker. Mitote is dancing our dreams, our ambitions into reality, by challenging what is already there, slamming our past into our present, so that our future is ever more convoluted, and therefore, ever more clear. With overloaded eyes, all we can do is sit, bow, kneel, and behold the beauty that is the world. We witness the Mitote. Avant-Garde lets us see the contrast, so that Mitote can let us see, be present, be more ourselves in the world.
92) Something characteristic of or resulting from a particular human institution, period, trend, or individual (Webster) 93) Trickster, the player of what is and could be, someone who keeps you on your toes, plays with you, and keeps play sacredso that learning can occur throughout life.

Realness Gurl, in the Ballroom World, Scene94, Realness is the name of the game. How well can you pull off your particular Walk-performance honey? You werk your style, you work your realness, you work your fierceness, you win honey! You will win! What is realness? Well, lets just say you were born a boy. But, for the Ball, you want to compete as a woman. You want to be a Femme Queen. You have to pull off realness. It is not an impersonation; it is embodiment of, in this case, your inner lady. So much so, she takes over, and walks around, dances around Realness, is about taking whatever is not real for you (as suggested by society), and making it real for youso much so, it cannot be denied by any simple or advanced observation, but you are declared whatever you made yourself to be, it is really you.

94) The Ballroom, also known as the Ball, is an event that takes place in large halls, created by mainly queer people of color, to compete in performative arts. Originally, the people of colors Drag Ball, it has evolved to have many categories and events, and is practiced in most major cities of the US. Though still a subculture, many pop stars are using The Balls aesthetics for their work.

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Gurl, you make yourself a Femme Queen, you think and feel Femme Queen, you werk Femme Queen, and then you are Femme Queen. Mitote is that, it is realness, it functions as realness. In Mitote, the dance is your performativity that is foreign to you; the dance material is not your reality. But, with realness, you make it your reality. You take that dance, you change it with fierceness, and then you werk it so hard, it is you, and no one can deny it. There is no need for hiding, or over-performance; just your unadorned95 realness96. You are a Mitote dancer. You dance your dance, yourself, your realness.

95) I believe that is why people loved watching me, I knew how to be naked on stage, completely unadorned (Valda Sutterfield). Merce told her she moved too pretty, or rather, with too much extra movements, and what she did was not pure, just the action, at its fullest. Unadorned movement and performance is desired in Mitote. 96) Unadorned realness is difficult. You dance what you wish and need to be, your dream, without any decoration and influences, just pure, at its most full. A hard but beautiful Mitote state of bright light.

Ode to a Native Dancer: Native boy goes off to college. Not traditional. Native boy, dances traditional dances, does he dance them in the right way, in a good way is he brown, did he eat the right food, is his regalia is put-on correctly. Yes, Traditional. Native boy comes back to from college. Not traditional. Native boy helps out his family with a job. Traditional. Native boy drinks alcohol and mourns for his people. Negative, but traditional. Native boy dates a white woman. Not traditional, anger from his community, hidden in shame. Native boy is gay. That was traditional, until the colonial infection: it is now no longer good, kill him. Native boy does a traditional dance. He is traditional. Native boy sings the native songs. Traditional. Native boy does contemporary dance. He is a disgrace for siding with the white people, give back to your people! Native boy pushes traditions into the futurenot traditional...no elders, yes, it is...it is traditionallead our people into the future. Help us see what our scars have blocked. That we can take back this land, maybe, in a new way, in a different way...we must open ourselves to Mitote a creation of futurity for our people, a living dancing ode to the people of the native boy.

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Fierceness For Wili Ninja97, recognizing fierceness in ones voguing meant that he witnessed the voguers profound self knowledge... To be fierce in voguing, one must have a great sense of identity and control of ones self and body. Interestingly enough, this is voguing deep root: knowledge and control of ones identity, body, and self, thereby effectively expressing ones personhood through movementthis is fierceness. Voguings fierceness comes from within, and is recognized and labeled from without. The cycle works and continues to produce the dance of voguing. Mitote is a sacred fierceness. Mitote is a sacred voguing.
97) Wili Ninja, Founder and Legendary Overall Father of the House of Ninja, was one of the first dancers of Voguing to promote it as that. Before him, it was known as performance in the Ball. Based on poses, and movement vocabulary build out of ones fierceness, he became the pioneer of voguing, and is often referred to and the creator of voguing itself. (Ogunnaike) For Mitote, Fiercenessvoguing, is drawling from ones inner self, to outwardly produce a statement, dance, is the main process for its dancing, its physical manifestation. One could say then Mitote is fierceness, but more soa sacred fierceness.

Mitote Body Your Pelvis is a bowl98, a clay pot, inside which a plant grows. At the top, a crown99, a flower, beaming your light from your heart into the sky, and out your eyes. You do not have arms, your arms are your back, they are your wings100--they let you fly. Your spine is your center101, your stem, which needs to stretchstretch it, bend it, curve102 it. Your legs, like thick branches in the mud, cling to the soft clay103 that is the earth, and hold the pot, as if it is a newborn baby. Your core, your stomach, the empty space at the opening of the pot, a cave, deep and strong, within it, your power, sparks fly, so you may bask in your light. The spine is your center. It curves. Your arms are your wings. They fly.

98) The container, of light. 99) The top of your head is sacred and regal. 100) In order to use air, they must be energized and strong, but air must be in them. 101) The direct center of your body is your spine; it is the focus of our movement. 102) Not a contraction, but a curving of the spine.

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Your legs are your power. They step. You feet are like hands. The grab. You pelvis is your pot, you drink, you lift, and raise it to the sun, offering your self to the world. Your ribs hang on the spine, soft. The stomach, a cave. This where the light of the pot glistens104 out. The back does not exist. But, if it did, it would be long. The neck extends. The eyes are wide and observe with curiosity and generosity105. Your body is built on, of light. That light is in you. Every part of the body can see, the skin like eyes, you feel and see. You breathe into your bones. The whole body is a cavity, breath renews its life To dance is to always extend, out, or inward, you always extend. The body extends into nothingness106, and when the dance is over, the body remembers, collected, peaceful, there. Sacred Space.

103) Feel deeply grounded n the earth.

104) The tummy, soft and strong, is the stabilizing core where all movement passes through, not necessarily originated. 105) To dance is to also witness. Not only with the eyes, but the full body and consciousness. It is to give thanks, to dance, to witness. 106) Nothingness is not void or absent, it means death, but also rebirth, and continuance. To discard and let in the new.

Fierceness2 Who you are, your wholeness, is of upmost importance to Mitote. How you change the choreography by dancing it as you are: this is the art of Mitote. It is your fierceness. It is not about the movement. It is not about the choreography or the dance it is about the dancing, your dancingthis is what makes it Mitote, this is what makes Mitote sacred. Fierceness is doing something so focused, so well, no one else could do it like youit is in fact the moment when you are you. It is scary, it is kind, it is generous, it is regal, it is benevolentit is fierceness.

One cannot explain fierceness, except that it is that movement when all you can do is exclaim YESH HONEY!!! YOU BETTER WERK!!!107. When someone is fierce, it is so amazing, it could make you gag. It shocks your out of your seat; it shakes your soul, your feelings, your logic, your ideology of your situation and presence. It is an exclamation point done in time, space, and the body. It is a divine, sacred movement. It is fierce. 108) Fierce werk: a bit

107) This is spelled phonetically, to exaggerate the sense of feeling when spoken. Say the quotation as you read it with vigor and you will not only read, understand, but also feel fierceness.

repetitive. But, reemphasizes that all you do

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Fierceness is when someone does anything, with their whole body, and it is so focused and available and true to them, you can see the werk. They werk the dance. The werk is done, and the dance is not made, they are made. This is fierceness. Fierce werk108 is the direct line to Mitote.

to be all you are, is fierce, is your werking it. Be it, and it will come.

Source Inside you. There is a light. The light moves. You move. This light is the source109. This light is your source. This light moves, you move. Inside you there is a light and this light moves and you move, it moves so much that you dance. The dance is small at first. The dance is small. Small dance110. This dance can be large. This dance is your dance. This dance comes from your light. This dance is all that you ever do. You eat, you breathe, you walk, you danceyou everythingyour dance. Respect this, admire it as a masterpiece. You are a masterpiece. This is internal fierceness, the source, and the stabilization111 of Mitote.

109) The source: where all things are rooted. More than an essence, it is your existence; it is you and everything else simultaneously. 101) The dance of life movement that indicate life from the perspective of a witness. Witnessing your small dance, is thus, remembering you are alive. (Doxtater) 111) Traditional Native dance [such as small dance] established, secure, strong as a rock, will serve this new breed of dance and musical artist, a training ground and launching pad for the journey toward forging a flexible, tensile dance performance (Murphy 197).

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Turtle Island When I was a boy, I was told how the earth was made. My mother told me that the sky was full of clouds and rainbows light came down and shined upon the world, which was then, only water. Rainbow Girl, the king112 of the realm of the sky, would look down upon the earth and wonder. She wanted to touch the water, feel its cool warmth. She let down her ladder of rainbows, and climbed down to the waters of the blue planet. As she touched the waters, the animals came forth, falling from the skyhappily they began to swim, and swimbut there was little to hold on tomany just floated there in the waters, tired, relaxing. It was then Rainbow Girl realized there was a need for land. But with all her magic, she could produce no land. She needed Land in order to make Land113. She asked the animals to see if they could get her land from the bottom of the waters floor. Many held their breaths, dived deep into the water, but could not get land. Many died on their way down, and Rainbow Girl buried them in the sky. One, Squirrel came up, she had died from the crush of the waters weightbut as Rainbow Girl was going to bury her, she realized, clenched in Squirrels hand was land. She died, but with her last breath, she got land from the oceans floor. Rainbow Girl, took the land, but as she tried to make it float, make more land, it would sink114 She did no know what to do. Turtle came to her. He was a good swimmer, strong. He told her to place the land on his back, on his shell. She could make the world, lands, on his back. He was strong and he could hold it up. Rainbow Girl was amazed at this sacrifice. With blessing and prayer, she placed the earth on turtles back, and with her magic of the clouds, land grew, expanded115. The animals stepped onto this land and they had a home. Rainbow Girl cried, and there were the first rains for the earth to be nourished and replenished116. All the animals thanked rainbow girl, and loved turtlefor now there is land to live upon. Rainbow Girl named this place, this new land, Turtle Island. We live upon Turtles Back. With respect and honor, we walk the earth he has given us. He is our lovely support117.

112) King, ruler, dictator, giver, queen

113) Mitote law of the conservation of creation: you must have something in order to cerate something. You need dance in order to make dance. You use your small dance in order to make grand dances

114) You must have support in your life in order to float. Your dance must be grounded in order to be fully performed. Mitote is only complete if fully supported by its sacred space, time, and force. 115) Light expands, love expands, dance expands, and Mitote expands. This is how it is useful to our lives. 116) Rest and water wash and replenish our vitality. 117) The turtle, the earth, the land, is our most primary and sacred support.

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In a name118: Mitote. It was suggested to call this dance form: neo-Indigenous dance. Yet, it was met with rejection. The term neo- and new age has no validity to it. New to what was often the question. Yet, to call this dance traditional is something that does not make sense to at all since the form has begun now, and was not a truly previous existing tradition. So, there was consideration of contemporary Indigenous dance but the form is not limited as such, it is not an Indigenous dance which has been contemporized. But, maybe, Indigenous Contemporary Dance119 made senseyet such a title is incomplete. Yes, this work is contemporary dancesort-of, more like an AvantGarde, a Coyote, a trickster, an artifice, an art; but its reality is much more specific. So, what kind of Indigenous is it? It is Aztec, Mexica, Xicano, and Apache. Each unified with one idea: Coyote-Huehuecoyotl-Kokopelli. The musician-dancer-muse, and protector, servant of ones home: Aztlan. Therefore, one could call this form: Aztlan120 Contemporary Dance. But, that is too long, and still, a bit too vague. Aztlan Dance121it takes away ties to the rest of the contemporary dance world, and leaves it for what it is, a dance, build out of, in service to, Aztlan. But, that feels too impersonal, and calling upon Danza Aztec too heavily, and this form: Mitote is about the self. Therefore, Mitote. Mitote danceno; Simpler: Mitote. One word, is all that is necessary Mitote: Coyote Dance, Aztlan Dance, it is a kind of Indigenous contemporary dance, but it is: Mitote. This is the naming ceremony.122

118) The naming ceremony is very import. To name something, is to put it into existence. Though it has always been there, it is actualized and affirmed by given a name.

119) Concert Stage Dance of the current day in 2011. Often, its main components come from the traditions dance cannons of Jazz, Modern, Post-Modern, Ballet, and Urban/Street Dance.

120) Aztlan, the place of seven caves, the sacred home of the Aztecs. Once we die, we travel for seven years, though the many caves, the underground, until we reach, Aztlan, our home of light. Our bodies are these homes, replicated here on earth. 121) Aztlan Dance could be seen understood as the most sacred dance of life and light, our small dance, our Mitote, but Mitote is a concert dance, and thus, a bit more built in expressionism, than pure sacred dance. 122) Naming ceremonies take many forms. For this dance form, it is in the middle of the manifesto.

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Decolonization123 The process of understanding ones colonization, working with it, preventing further colonization, returning to ones roots and traditions and ancient self, moving forward with wholeness and wholesome. Dance of Decolonization: Mitote: to dance to see oneself, to be who they are, and explore their mind, body, spirit, embodiment, wholenessand through the act of dancing, let equality, peace, compassion, beholding spread across the world. The dream is harmony of people. The dream is sharing and giving thanks. Mitote, dances this into reality. Simply by dancing, it does, it exists. As we dance, we affect the world. As we dance, we change the world. As we dance, we create our world. Mitote.
123) Indigenous knowledge is an anticolonial project[the] process of creating knowledge in order to accomplish an end that is desired by the people, this decolonizing methodology encourages people to become involved in their own community transformationa libratory process oriented towards the rebuilding of sovereign, self-determined Native (Wilson) peoples.

Training One must train for Mitote. It is not just beingthough that, in itself is an important aspect, it is not the only oneit is not the only training. Mitote involves a deep personal practice. The body must be physically fit for dance, the mind must be focused and ready to dance, and most importantly, the spirit must be ready, open, and able to dance. The purpose of the Mitote Class is to enable the dancer to be able to commit to the physical, embodied feat of dancing Mitote. This class also enables the mind to take in information, and change it quickly, so that one can be in control of all or any movement material. The class works, most importantly, on the spirit, on ones performativity and fiercenessso that even in stillness, there is dance and movement, 124) Choreo: short for just as exciting as any overtly athletic feat. The purpose of the class is not to give choreo-124, but give the dancer movements and small dances, isolations, which will be added together later by a choreographer. The purpose of the class is to train ones wholeness as such: Strength and flexibility to allow facility in

choreography, suggesting movement combination (not choreography): merely movements strung together like beads, without notice of their individual shape, color, texture, or

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movement, to ultimately lead to ones dancing freedom: Availability125. The dancer, when dancing, should have a sense of availability. That is to say, he or she is available to do anything. He or she in such control of the body and the movement, at any time, he or she can change his or her mind and the body will follow. All movement, all states, are his or her choicecompletely dancing with focus and control, completely free and available.

relationship to one another. 125) To be open, unadorned, but flexible, and strong. Prepared and ready. Efficient. Not needed tension, relaxed being, able to profoundly do the task, dance, requested.

Embodiment. The Sacred Practice.126 The mind; this is a place of logic. It figures out the world it makes sense of the world. It is a place of contemplation and discovery. Analysis, dissemination, pondering, wondering, wandering, wisdom, intellect; this is the mind. The body; this is a place of feeling. It senses out the world to figure it out. It is a place of discovery and contemplation; exploration. Wandering, pondering, sensing, feeling, keeping, dissemination, expression, intellect, wisdom, analysis; this is the body. The idea of embodiment is this: the mind and body are one. This is Mitote. This is the sacred practice.
126) Mitote Embodiment is very much a kind of Aesthetics of the bodymindhow meaning grows out of our organic transactions with our environment (Johnson 15).

Choreography Mitote choreography is made and arranged out of itorganic. It is sourced from the body. It all starts with a question. An example could be, one would ask: what is death? How then, would your body respond?

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Let the body improvise127, move, express what it sees as the answer fitting to the question what is death. This is the source material. It is seen, it is repeated, over and over, until there is some kind of movement phrase or spatial arrangement that is sufficient to be seen. From there, Mitote dance is created. Movement is found. Found movement is observed. Intuition128 is utilizedwhere does this lead us to, but to create more movement Rhythm129 is essential. Dance in time and space. All movement posses a natural rhythm, the choreographer must be true to this rhythm. The dance is created out of itself. But, it is sourced from the body. It lives out of your energy and performance. You must let it thrive outside of your material beingout of yourself. To dance is to let out that dance from the past, so it may live in future timeor it will be lost, dead. For now, for one, it lives out of the individual. The dance of ones life, ones passion, ones body, ones wholeness. Choreographed and arranged in space and time, as movement tells us it what needs to be. The dance we make has already been made in future time. Now we just need to make it by following the clues130. We just need to dance it

127) Improvisation as a way to let the body inform the mind, verses, the other way to dance, the mind informing the body (Halprin) 128) We have many senses, many more than five, one of which is intuition, and in Mitote, it is coveted. 129) If there is no such thing as silence, then there is not such thing as absent timeeverything is born out with a rhythm, a heartbeat, the key is to respect this Huehueold drum. 130) The clues are all that is around us. How we arrange it is our art. How we edit and perfect it is our craft.

Sacred131 Space. Sacred Space is this land. It is the context in which we live. When in ceremony, there is sacred space. It may not be in trance, I may not be in regalia, scared space in there in ceremony, in all life. It is giving thanks132: to turtle island, to my people, to mother earth, to my ancestors, everything. One does not try to DO ceremony133, but be present, and let ceremony happen, and try to keep it going, continuing, with peace, with my harmony. It is not glamour, and it is not spectacle.

131) The profoundly common: the innumerable practices by means of which uses reappropriate the space organized by techniques of sociocultural production (De Certeau xiv) 132) The most sacred

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Mitote takes place in a named, acknowledged Sacred Space. There is a ceremony occurring in the dancing of Mitote. But, more honestly and closely to the subject of Mitote, the dance gives thanks. The dance is a respectful event. With every step, there is a simple prayer of thank you. With every coordinated choreography, there are understandings, release. Space, is not only spacespace, for Mitote, is Sacred Space, and must be used with such sensibility, honor, openness, and beholding. Internal Sacred Space; this is our research.134 External sacred space135; this is our habitat and inspiration. All that is included inside of us is our research. How we move, our habits, our non-habits. Why. When one asks, what is cheese, and we let our body respond, it tells us what is cheese. How many ways may you express cheesethis is your dance. Should one ask: what it means to be a black manwhat does ones non-black body, or black body, tell them about this unknown, known reality and non-reality? False impression stereotypes, fear, lies, friendships, loves, sex, food, dances, windows, houses, streets, hoodsall this information is sacred. Sacred information, sacred space, sacred dance. Mitote is sacred dance. Often it is not linear; often it is not obviously logical. It is what happens. It is Mitote. It is sacred space. It is the movements on the back of turtle island. It is the earthquake that wakes us up to remember where you come from. .Earthquake.136

practice is to always honor and give thanks for everything, in all that you do. It is the enactment of the sacred, selflessly giving your energy, prayer, spirit, kindness and light to others. It is not simply a thank you, but a true bow, a grace, a moment of time, to give your thank you in a proper, profound, and generous way. With sensitivity, you walk softly, you give thanks to the earth for holding you up tall and strong.

133) The intention of ceremony is not to create a spiritual event, but invite spirit. And should it not come, it was not meant to be, was not timethis is the function of sacred timeit happens as need be. 134) Our own internal embodiment and Mitote. 135) The sacred dimensionthe participants experience the sanctity of human existence as a divine creation existence is not given by what modern men call Nature but is creation of Others: spirits, divine beings, perceptions, ideas, experiences, love, stars. (Spencer 89) 136) This whole essay is an earthquake, an avant-garde awakening for dance.

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Choreography 2 Comes from a sacred space: your body. This is a sacred space, thus all that come out of it is sacred. The key is to observe what the body does, and look at it, behold it, and let it tell you, let it take you, let it show you where to go. This is intuition of the mind and body wholeness embodimentletting impulse, physiologically, psychologically, emotion, and logic takes over. This is choreographing with wholeness and consciousnessbelieving in what you create as pure. This is respect. This is giving thanks, a sacred process. Composing, arranging, editing the choreography, which comes from the body, is an external colonization. Mitote is a balance of colonization and the traditional. Your bodys natural material is the traditional, which is colonized into a composed work for the stage. To acknowledge this, and move forward is Mitote choreography. To arrange it, to that which speaks most to the raw material, which tries whole-heartedly to maintain the original rawness, the original knowledge of the bodythis is Mitote. Mitote: Choreography with respect to its source, with respect to your wholeness. A sacred choreography.

Witness There is never an audience137 for Mitote. There are never viewers. There are never participants. There are witnesses. To witness is the participation required of Mitote viewers. Beholding is their strategy. There is rarely a meaning to a Mitote. Less is there a narrative, a plot; but there is a subject, a story, and sacredness. The witness makes meaning for him or herself. The witness makes the Mitote significant for him or herself. Meaningfulness is subjective. The dance is what it is. Part of the art of the dance is the relationship of what happens on stage, what is, and how the witness takes it in,
137) Not simply people who listen. There requires no passivity.

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what you are. The Mitote is made with a certain subject, a certain question. It does not matter what that information is for the witness. The witness needs only take in the material. Just as you walk down a street and witness the world, you witness a Mitote 138. This is a scared witnessing, a mundane witnessing, and a spectacular witnessing

138) A dance can be traveling itself, it can be life. You as a witness affect and experience the effects of your existence in the world around youwitness is therefore a kind of dance, a kind of participation, a partnering.

Aztlan. Defined. Aztlan: The place of Seven Caves. This is the sacred place to the Aztec People, the Mexica People. It is the spiritual place where we go when we die. Each caves a sacred space. The place is dark. The caves are full of light. The journey to the cave is treacherous and dangerous. Aztlan is protected by Huehuecoyotl139the muse of recreationthe story tellerthe story keeperthe giverthe knowledge holder the academic of life, time, space, our spiritual forcethe keeper of Aztlan. Aztlan: the sacred place. It is from where we are born, and it is to where we will return. We recreate it for ourselves on this earth, but it is temporary. We are held here on this earth by turtle, and fed by mother earth. Aztlan is home. Aztlan is the sacred House140. Protected by a dog141. Warm light leads us to peace. There is a hard road ahead, but a companion is always with us: Huehuecoyotl.

139) Nahuatl: Huehue (drum, music, heart, the old one) Coyotl (coyote): The Ancient Coyote

140) House: place or home, where you feel warm. Your flesh and body. The spiritual temple of the future and past. Your honest wholeness. 141) Xoloitzcuintle: Aztec hairless dog. Its myth is that it is a sacred protector of humans, with healing abilities and luck. Moreover, once its owner/master dies, the dog becomes the spiritual guide and navigator of the underworld its the master.

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This is an Aztec Mitote: The synthesis of post-modern142 dance and traditional Native dance. Time, Space, Music, Dance, Autonomy. Cunningham and Cage saw dance and music to be separate in their art, autonomous. Yet, the dance and music would be connected by time, and place in the same space, and in the indeterminate order of things, a work-of-art would come forth. This was, and still is a brilliant practice. Theirs is a courageous Avant-Garde work. In Aztec Dance, Rhythm is key. Yet, music, really, is not. That is to say, the dance can exist without drums, without sound, because in dancing the steps, there is rhythm, there is sound, but most importantly: there is time. Each dance, itself, will go in and out of time signatures, from a 4/4, to a 5/4, to a 6/8, depending on how the dancer decides to lead the dance and emphasize the work, the choreography. At times too, the work is swung, and rhythm and time is bent. In Aztec dance, the Drummer follows the dancer. Though the Drum is the heartbeat of the whole dance, yet the drum cannot exist without the movement of the body. It could be said; that there is first dance, then there is sound. The drum only makes heard what is occurring inside the dancer, inside the dance. The Aztec dancer wears bells on his ankles; these sacred dance items are called chachayotes143. With each step, the sounds produced by these bells emphasize the movement made by the dancer. The Drum could be though of as an extension of the chachayotes, it makes louder what the chachayotes are saying, singing, sounding: what the body I saying, dancing, singing, being. The Aztec dance is often choreographed in phrases: done in one direction to certain counts, and then done to the other side in the same counts. So one could walk for 4 counts to the left, and would then walk to the right for 4 counts, then repeat that. This gives a total of 4 passes, two to the left and right (L, R, L, R), for a certain piece of phrase material. Here we see the use of the sacred four, an honoring again of the four directions, a traditional notion. The steps tell the drum what to playthere is often a certain rhythm already known for each dance, for each step. They are aligned by time, aligned by the body. But, there are situations where the drum stops playing:
143) Ankle instruments which make the sound of rattles as the dancer moves and dances. They are made of nutsfor the sound and leatherfor the fastening. 142) Dance built out of the Modern Dance tradition by rejecting many of modern dances formalism. A revolutionary tradition of dance built out of questions what is dance, what could dance be, what else is dance

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silence, and the dance continues. The dance continues. The dance continues.. For Aztec dance, it is impossible to separate time and rhythm from the dance. For many traditional Native dances, time and rhythm exist in dance. But, the music is separate. In the Pow-Wow, intertribal dance, the music played, the song, may be completely different every time. But, it is the dancers responsibility to exist, play with, and be in time and rhythm of the steps of the certain dance he or she does. Music here, will determine tempo, but the dancer can choose to work with it, or out of it, or against it, as long as he knows the time, and knows his steps. Dance and Music are separate, autonomous, but lovers, partners. Cunningham and Cage are separate individuals, autonomous, but lovers, partners. Mitote only wishes to make all of this more visible. To now choreograph in Mitote, one needs to let his or her dance be autonomous, but allowed to be in love with music; and know, that dance cannot be separated from time, rhythm, and space. That is to say, as the dance steps, movements, shapes, come into our physical bodies, our physical realms, from out dreams, from our embodied selves, we must respect that they come into the world with certain time signatures, certain rhythms. See the rhythm, see the movement, enjoy the movement, and enjoy the rhythm. Then play, and set time, set space, set dance: compose and choreograph. Then, communicate the time, let the music of the dance occur, and then let the music of sound fill in, and partner with the dance. Though one can make a dance to a set piece of music, to honor Mitote, the dance is made, autonomous to outside Music. But, the dance partners with the music. It is the sexuality, the lover, the production, and reproduction, creation of the arts. It is reflective of Huehuecoyotl. This is the Traditional, Indigenous Avant-Garde Knowledge.

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Performance .Unadorned Performance. Fierceness. When one performs Mitote, he or she is not performing anything but him or herself. The movement is choreographed only to set time and space. The movement material, is to be manipulated by the performerso that their fierceness pours throughtheir naked self. The choreography, the movement material is only a guide144. The choreography is the choreographers movement. It is his or her colonization on you. You must realize this, see it, it is not youit is not your own. But, you take it, and you add to it, you add yourself, your past, your technique, your will to do the werk in the manner you see fit, and the dancefully done, with your naked, available body, dances fully a Mitote, a mix of choreography, and the dancers dancing, the dancers self. The dance must be unadorned. It must be naked. It must be fierce. The oscillation145 between theses two extremes is Mitote. The choreography of Mitote is and open-score-composition in time and space. You as the dancer explore this, with your life force: your performance. The dance itself is a dialogue between you and the choreographer. You must have confidence you are an equal player in the making of a dance, for you are the one dancing it. The dance is triangulated, between choreographer, dancer, and witness. The Mitote is a ceremony, for all involved, to take us to a place of light: sharing: Mitote.
145) It is the in-between state of the two states. The absolutely fabulous, and the absolutely null. It is the going between the two states, letting them exist simultaneously, that is the dance of Mitote. 144) Guide, like a dog, it is our dog, our Huehuecoyotl, captured in a document, for Mitote.

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Concert Dance146 This idea of concert dance can only survive if it stands not only for the general public, not only of the private audience, but also as a part, a necessary part of the community. That is to say, dance, not pleasure dance/club dance, or social dance, but modern dance, dance for the stage, beyond display of virtuosity or tricks, or even showing of hot bodies of these models and ideas of humans, but dances extreme expressive power through movement, performance, time, space, force/energy, as a summoning, ritualistic, and artistic formthis must be integrated into the community as necessary and important. It once was, now again, it must continueno longer detached. No longer so post-modern ruled by the so-called avant-garde, trying to do away with the public, when they are guilty of making communities themselves No, the avant-garde must again be seen as a part, an accepted into our society by doctrine and practicenot donations or private donors.but grants and funds by the people, for the people, so that art may flourish. Again.dance, modern dance, contemporary, Mitote, with its extreme expressive power through movement, performance, time, space, force/energy, as a summoning, ritualistic, and artistic form must be intergraded as a necessary part of community, the large community, the community of the United States of America. This is not to say communities, but community. To move past the public, and work as a community, yields a more powerful country. We must all be friendsno more with this segregationnot only by race, gender, sexuality, but stopping the class divides, and the looks/attractiveness divides We need to stop, and express our thoughts. We need to integrate ourselves, and each other. Dance is a necessary part of human existence. Let it stand again and be known as such.. Ometeotl
146) Modern, contemporary concert dance is not yet integral to American Culture. To many other cultures, it is absolutely necessary and important. Dance is in danger, dance is being exploited, it is now, that it needs to become integrated and ever ore free and useful to our daily, mundane lives. It is now, that Mitote brings us back to our small, sacred danceto our larger, fuller living.

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CONCLUSION If you ask, what I am, I am a Mitote ro. If you ask what is my practice, I follow dancing If you ask what is Mitote, I say, it is the Decolonization of the self, fierceness, compassion, beholding, you: at your most excellent. If you ask who is Huehuecoyotl, He is the Old Coyote, the storyteller, the one who helps The Creator, the muse, the guardian of Aztlanthe sacred place, the trickster, the sexual sexy nasty guy/gal, the hunchback, the loyal one, the loner, the independent, the traveler, the nomad, the artist, the flute maker, Kokopelli, the creator of Mitote, the spirit of celebration and ceremony and gathering, the artist of embodied history, the one who is always there to answer questions if you have the correct thing to ask. Mitote is un-distilling dance. It is using the symbolism, the archetypes of the Native peoples. The dance is empty. The dancer fills the dance; the dance is filled by the danceremptiness if full. The dancers brings the dance to lifeand the dance lets the dancer live. In doing the dance, all abstraction becomes personal, emotional, real, reality, artifact, and art. The dance is not about something; it is open, givingit does not define, it is. The dances movements are built from common observations of ourselves and our environment, and our reality. We dance in, about, with our world. Choreography is not made out of emotion, but out of reflections, from our embodied choreographing, dancing body. Warrior. The war fought by Mitote is one for peace, loving, art, feeling, humanity, humanism, nature, respect, innovation, traditionalism, balance, giving, and freedom. Dancers of Mitote are warriors by dance, by dancing, by living, by enacting Mitote.
You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscript to store away, no painting to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for the unsteady souls. - Merce Cunningham

The Sacred Warrior: Dancer of Mitote.

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Work Cited Albright, Ann Cooper. Taken by Surprise: a Dance Improvisation Reader. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2003. Print. Anzalda, Gloria. Borderlands. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 2007. Print. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Key Concepts in Post-colonial Studies. London: Routledge, 2000. Print. Barrett, John, Yoshito Ohno, and Kazuo no. Kazuo Ohno's World from without and within. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2004. Print. Blom, Lynne Anne, and L. Tarin. Chaplin. The Intimate Act of Choreography. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh, 1982. Print. Browner, Tara. Heartbeat of the People: Music and Dance of the Northern Pow-wow. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2002. Print. De Certeau, Michel., and Steven Rendall. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley [u.a.: Univ. of California, 2007. Print. Deloria, Philip J. Playing Indian. New Haven: Yale UP, 1999. Print. Dolan, Jill. Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theater. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2008. Print. Doxtater, Michael G. "Indigenous Knowledge in the Decolonial Era." The American Indian Quarterly 28.3 (2004): 618-33. Print. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Chicago: Britannica Home Library, 1910. Print. Halprin, Anna, Siegmar Gerken, and Anna Halprin. Returning to Health: with Dance, Movement and Imagery. Mendocino, Calif.: LifeRhythm, 2002. Print.

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Johnson, Mark. The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago, 2008. Print. Johnson, Patrick E. "Quare" Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know About Queer Studies I Learned from My Grandmother." Text and Performance Quarterly 21.1 (2001): 1-25. Print. Lemon, Ralph. Geography. Hanover: Wesleyan UP, 2000. Print. McGregor, Deborah. "Coming Full Circle: Indigenous Knowledge, Environment, and Our Future." The American Indian Quarterly 28.3 (2004): 385-410. Print. Mithlo, Nancy Marie. "History Is Dangerous." Museum Anthropology 19.2 (1995): 50-57. Print. Muoz, Jose Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York UP, 2009. Print. Novack, Cynthia Jean. Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvisation and American Culture. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin, 1990. Print. Ogunnaike, Lola. "Wili Ninja, 45, Self Created Star Who Made Voguing into an Art, Dies." New York Times. The New York Times. Web. Painter, Nell Irvin. The History of White People. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Print. Shea, Murphy Jacqueline. The People Have Never Stopped Dancing: Native American Modern Dance Histories. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2007. Print. Sherman, Jane. "The American Indian Imagery of Ted Shawn." Dance Chronicle 12.3 (1989): 366-82. Print. Spencer, Paul. Society and the Dance: the Social Anthropology of Process and Performance. Cambridge [u.a.: Cambridge UP], 1990. Print. Suzuki, Shunry, and Trudy Dixon. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Boston, MA: Weatherhill, 2009. Print.

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Webster Dictionary. G & D., 1966. Online. <www.merriam-webster.com>. Wilson, Angela Cavender. "Introduction: Indigenous Knowledge Recovery Is Indigenous Empowerment." The American Indian Quarterly 28.3 (2004): 359-72. Print.

Bibliography Albright, Ann Cooper. Taken by Surprise: a Dance Improvisation Reader. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2003. Print. Anzalda, Gloria. Borderlands. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 2007. Print. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Key Concepts in Post-colonial Studies. London: Routledge, 2000. Print. Bales, Melanie, Rebecca Nettl-Fiol, and Wendell Beavers. The Body Eclectic: Evolving Practices in Dance Training. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2008. Print. Barrett, John, Yoshito Ohno, and Kazuo no. Kazuo Ohno's World from without and within. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2004. Print. Blom, Lynne Anne, and L. Tarin. Chaplin. The Intimate Act of Choreography. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh, 1982. Print. Browner, Tara. Heartbeat of the People: Music and Dance of the Northern Pow-wow. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2002. Print. Bonfil, Batalla Guillermo., and Philip Adams. Dennis. Mxico Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization. Austin: University of Texas, 1996. Print. Buckland, Fiona. Impossible Dance: Club Culture and Queer World-making. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan UP, 2001. Print.

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Coloma, Roland Sintos. Postcolonial Challenges in Education. Decolonizing the Flesh. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. Print. De Certeau, Michel., and Steven Rendall. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley [u.a.: Univ. of California, 2007. Print. Deloria, Philip J. Playing Indian. New Haven: Yale UP, 1999. Print. Dolan, Jill. Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theater. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2008. Print. Doxtater, Michael G. "Indigenous Knowledge in the Decolonial Era." The American Indian Quarterly 28.3 (2004): 618-33. Print. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Chicago: Britannica Home Library, 1910. Print. Gomez-Pena, Guillermo. "In Defense of Performance Art." (2001). La Pocha Nostra. Web. <http://www.pochanostra.com/antes/jazz_pocha2/mainpages/in_defense.htm>. Halprin, Anna, Siegmar Gerken, and Anna Halprin. Returning to Health: with Dance, Movement and Imagery. Mendocino, Calif.: LifeRhythm, 2002. Print. Halprin, Lawrence. The RSVP Cycles; Creative Processes in the Human Environment. New York: G. Braziller, 1970. Print. Hardt, Yvonne. "Staging the Ethnographic of Dance History: Contemporary Dance and Its Play with Tradition." Dance Research Journal 43.1 (2011): 27-42. Print. Hewitt, Andrew. Social Choreography Ideology as Performance in Dance and Everyday Movement. Durham & London: Duke University P, 2005. Johnson, Mark. The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago, 2008. Print.

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Johnson, Patrick E. "Quare" Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know About Queer Studies I Learned from My Grandmother." Text and Performance Quarterly 21.1 (2001): 1-25. Print. Lemon, Ralph. Geography. Hanover: Wesleyan UP, 2000. Print. Mart, Samuel, and Gertrude Prokosch. Kurath. Dances of Anhuac; the Choreography and Music of Precortesian Dances. [New York]: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1964. Print. McGregor, Deborah. "Coming Full Circle: Indigenous Knowledge, Environment, and Our Future." The American Indian Quarterly 28.3 (2004): 385-410. Print. Memmi, Albert. Decolonization and the Decolonized. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2006. Print. Mithlo, Nancy Marie. "History Is Dangerous." Museum Anthropology 19.2 (1995): 50-57. Print. Muoz, Jose Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York UP, 2009. Print. ---. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics New York: University of Minnesota P, 1999. ---. "Gesture, Ephemera, and Queer Feeling: Approaching Kevin Aviance." Dancing Desires: Choreographing Sexualities on and off the Stage. Ed. Jane C. Desmond. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin, 2001. 423-45. Print. Novack, Cynthia Jean. Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvisation and American Culture. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin, 1990. Print. Ogunnaike, Lola. "Wili Ninja, 45, Self Created Star Who Made Voguing into an Art, Dies." New York Times. The New York Times. Web. Painter, Nell Irvin. The History of White People. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Print.

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Phelan, Peggy. Unmarked: the Politics of Performance. London [u.a.: Routledge, 2006. Print. Shea, Murphy Jacqueline. The People Have Never Stopped Dancing: Native American Modern Dance Histories. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2007. Print. Sherman, Jane. "The American Indian Imagery of Ted Shawn." Dance Chronicle 12.3 (1989): 366-82. Print. Sontag, Susan. "Notes on 'CAMP'" Partisan Review 31 (1964): 54-65. Print. Suzuki, Shunry, and Trudy Dixon. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Boston, MA: Weatherhill, 2009. Print. Sycamore, Mattilda Bernstein. That's Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation. Brooklyn: Soft Skull, 2008. Print. Webster Dictionary. G & D., 1966. Online. <www.merriam-webster.com>. Wilson, Angela Cavender. "Introduction: Indigenous Knowledge Recovery Is Indigenous Empowerment." The American Indian Quarterly 28.3 (2004): 359-72. Print.

May you Walk in Beauty.