ARROPAR LA MEMORIA
2023
Action carried out in collaboration with choreographer Lorena Hurtado and performers Catalina Longás and Leslie Apablaza. Young creators from Mala Memoria Danza 2023 participated, an initiative jointly organized by Balmaceda Arte Joven and the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, Santiago, Chile.
On the 50th anniversary of the civic-military coup d’état in Chile, we carried out this action at the
Museum of Memory, on International Human Rights Day. Arropar la Memoria (“Embracing Memory”) was inspired by the perseverance and resilience of the founding women of the Folkloric Ensemble of the Association of Relatives of the Disappeared Detainees, who introduced la cueca sola—presenting this traditional couple’s dance alone, as a way to evoke the forced absence of the other.
Original idea: Lorena Hurtado.
Photographic record: Freddy Ibarra.
Audiovisual recording and editing: Bruno Torres.
Museum of Memory and Human Rights, December 2023.
“A woman alone, wearing black shoes, a black skirt, a white blouse, and a white handkerchief, dances the cueca without her partner, without her father, without her son, without her brother… Cueca sola, which avoids all visible spectacularity of the traditional cueca… (...) the woman is neither followed nor accompanied by her partner, husband, common-law companion, nor by her father or son. There is no possible courtship or company; ‘she dances alone,’ with the portrait of her husband, father, or son pinned to her heart.”
Lorena Hurtado (2016), Practices and Representation between Dance, History, and Memory in Chile 1978–2013. Revista Interdanza del INBA, No. 37, Mexico.
