Mexican Folklórico Dance Across Borders (Exploratory Working Group)

Co-Chairs: Xóchitl Chávez ([email protected]) and Manuel R. Cuellar ([email protected])

This Mexican Folklórico Working Group serves as a platform to examine the ebbs and flows of Mexican regional and traditional dance--known today as folklórico-- as embodied cultural performances of mexicanidad (Mexicanness) and the contingent attachments to Greater Mexico they enable. We invite scholars to analyze the power dynamics at play in the performances of Mexican transnationalism through folklorico dance, addressing questions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, citizenship, and ability, as well as of indigeneity, Asian-, and Afro-diasporic expressions. Foregrounding an intersectional and transdisciplinary approach, including practice and community-engaged research, the Mexican Folklórico Working Group collectively tends to the affective, political, material, corporeal, and cultural forms mobilized by folklórico dance in Mexico, the United States, and across borders.

Xóchitl Chávez, Exploratory Working Group Co-Chair

Dr. Xóchitl C. Chávez is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Riverside Department of Music, holding the distinction of being the first tenured Chicana in the UCR department and any UC system music program. She earned her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology with a designated emphasis in Latin American and Latino Studies from UC Santa Cruz, complemented by interdisciplinary training in Museum Studies, Ethnomusicology, Folklore, and Social Documentation.

As an Activist Scholar, musician, and dancer, Dr. Chávez's research centers on practices of accompaniment and sincere collaborative intention. She ethically participates in creating music and dance while documenting the experiences of Mexican Indigenous migrants and Latinos in the United States, focusing on their cross-border efforts to preserve and maintain cultural traditions.

Dr. Chávez's forthcoming book, La Guelaguetza: Oaxacan Migrant Festivals and the Making of Transborder Indigeneity (University of Oxford Press, 2025), represents the first transborder, multi-sited ethnography of its kind, based on over eight years of fieldwork and performance participation in Guelaguetza festivals across Oaxaca and California. Her scholarship has been published in both Spanish and English in prestigious venues including Americas: A Hemispheric Music Journal, Desacatos: Revista De Ciencias Sociales, and Yearbook for Traditional Music, as well as through esteemed university presses such as the University of Indiana Press, University of California Press, and University of Illinois Press.

As a co-investigator with the University of Colorado Boulder's American Music Research Center, she has secured multiple grants, including National Endowment for the Humanities funding for "Soundscapes of the People: A Musical Ethnography of Pueblo, Colorado." Her work has been recognized by the Mexican Consulate in California, the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage, and the Colorado Association for Bilingual Education, among others.

Dr. Chávez serves as President of the Latin American and Caribbean Section for the Society for Ethnomusicology and co-chairs the inaugural Mexican Folklórico Dance Across Borders exploratory working group within the Dance Studies Association. She is a founding member of Armonía, a Houston-based nonprofit dedicated to advancing Latino/a music education in public schools and offering workshops in communities across the U.S. and Mexico. She recently served as curatorial advisor and guest curator for the Inaugural Molina Family Gallery in the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino and is currently collaborating with The Cheech Museum. Through these interconnected roles, Dr. Chávez bridges academic scholarship, community engagement, and cultural preservation, thereby fostering a deeper understanding of the transnational experiences of Indigenous and Latino communities.

Manuel R. Cuellar, Exploratory Working Group Co-Chair

Manuel R. Cuellar is Associate Professor of Latin American and Latinx Studies at The George Washington University. His research engages questions of performance, focusing on dance, indigeneity, and Afro-mestizo imaginaries in Mexico. Currently, he is working on a manuscript that engages and deconstructs the political and cultural production of “undocumentedness,” brown intimacies, queer migrancy, and LatinMex masculinities. Cuellar is the author of Choreographing Mexico: Festive Performances and Dancing Histories of a Nation (UT Press 2022), winner of the 2023 de la Torre Bueno First Book Award by the Dance Studies Association.