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Power structures in colonized communities have long been determined by the physical deployment of the colonizer and the colonized. Puerto Rican and Dominican communities have long been displaced by this politics of space in regard to their physical relationship with their land, and the contradictory economic relationship that renders the possibility for them to emigrate to other lands in order to seek their physical placement in a more secure economical environment. Thus the displacement of these communities becomes a choreographic relationship between frontiers that are politically, economically and physically elaborated.

In this performance piece, I would like to illustrate how the choreographic instances of migration become a displacement of many colonial traditions such as language, traditional art forms and conceptions of race. I would like to examine how artists in Puerto Rican and Dominican Diaspora communities have managed to establish a relationship with their “original” frontier, and how from this new frontier they are able to articulate new forms of anti-colonial art as means of resistance to language imposition, cultural imposition and racial barriers. All these questions will be posed by means of an exploration of my body in relationship to the racial, economical and cultural issues that condition my experience as an immigrant. I would also like to look at how this is experienced in the Dominican Diaspora that migrates to Puerto Rico and how living my whole life in a Dominican Diaspora community has helped me shape notions of race, class and citizenship struggle in relationship to my colonial status; and how the migrant experience varies because of this precise difference. Through the employment of Post Colonial, Movement and Critical Race Theories, I would like to draw some conclusions on how the embodiment of citizenship, race and displacement get played out in relationship to a chorographical stance. I am incorporating Andre Lepecki’s theory on the ontological/ chorographical construction of race policies, as laid out in his study of William Pope L’s crawls and on Edward Said’s notions of embodied appropriation of land and citizenship.