Malajuste-Piezas de Movimiento = Maladjustment-Movement Pieces

Video documentation of Viveca Vázquez' Puerto Rican experimental dance performance 'Malajuste' (Maladjustment). Viveca Vázquez is a choreographer, dancer, and a professor of humanities and contemporary dance for actors at the University of Puerto Rico. She presented her first work with Pisotón, the first experimental dance group of Puerto Rico and, shortly after, Taller de Otra Cosa, of which she became the first director. Through the company she presented her choreographic work and produced events such as 'Rompeforma' a key festival in the development of the experimental dance and performance scene in Puerto Rico, which was co-produced with Puerto Rican choreographer based in the U.S. Merian Soto. Since 1984 she has produced and performed experimental dance works in the United States, Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina, among a great number of other places. As a teacher she has developed a pedagogical model based on body conscience and improvisation. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics

'Malajuste' is a Taller de Otra Cosa's proposal, created as a collective collaboration with a group of young people to work on dance, and to develop a space of co-creation, exploration, and study. This performance includes four pieces: The first one, 'Mast-urbana, ' plays with sexuality topics, and gender roles, in a society marked by taboo. The video insert explores topics such as sexuality, religion, masturbation, and guilt, and the relationship with the own body; the presence of this video also points out the role of visuality in our body self-perception. The second piece, 'Mira y qué' questions pre-concepts of what a masculine body might be, and subverts the relationship between the masculine and the feminine. The feminine 'voice' is also questioned through the resource of lip-synching. The third piece, 'Nacedós' contrasts quotidian movement vs. very oppressive sound. In this manner, the piece proposes one of the main concerns of this performance: how to 'adjust'? How does the language of the body adjust to external inputs, like sound; and also to 'constructed' inputs, like gender roles, or visuality? Finally, the last piece, 'Vieques no es un pescao' is dedicated to Vieques Island and Puerto Rico, and their resistance against army tests by the US military. This island is referred as a zone of disaster; however, the question about which force is more harmful, the natural forces or the human forces -- with their political and economical greed -- remains open. With this last part, the idea of "adjustment" involves a political turn and a component of social concern that includes Puerto Rico in the reflection presented on stage. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics