Disabled Choreographer Christopher Unpezverde Núñez Is Skeptical of “Healing”
Photo Javier Gamboa/Illustrated Portrait by Denise Nestor
When two sweaty, exhausted dancers in a work by Christopher Unpezverde Núñez conclude their performance by picking up a bowl of fake blood and using it to paint on the ground, they manage something unlikely: a tone more meditative than macabre. That was important for the choreographer, who, during a rehearsal over the winter, said he sees the association of blood with violence and horror as distinctly American, referring to guns and borders. In his latest piece, The Square: Displacement with no end, which premiered in March at Abrons Arts Center in New York, Núñez wanted to celebrate blood as a source of life, and explore the body as a material.
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As with most of his works, a voiceover accompanies the dance. It has a narrative that doubles as prompts for the dancers, but also bleeds into the realm of description. This comes naturally for Núñez, who is visually impaired, though he also includes a separate, live audio description track conceived specifically for blind audiences. For The Square, Núñez, who was born and raised in Costa Rica and is currently a fellow at Princeton University, instructs his dancers to feel the elements, the vibrations of their ancestors, and their third eye. He sounds more like a yoga instructor than a ballet master, encouraging dancers to listen to their bodies rather than dominate them. He wants them to get into a trance.
Núñez says he is unlearning his training in the school of German expressionism as typified by Pina Bausch; in that context, he was taught that to dance is to suffer, an attitude he regards as both Western and ableist. When his dancers generate momentum, they’re instructed to let the energy carry them where it may—a method he describes as decidedly decolonial. Rotations and undulations mark his choreography, dancers revolving around one another as they move, their spines billowing like inchworms. Núñez said his “vortex” method evolved from his trouble judging distances: when everyone rotates around one point, it helps him predict their positions to avoid collisions.
The Square has a score by Alfonso “Poncho” Castro, who uses indigenous Central American instruments like the carraca, basically, a donkey jaw modified by ants; the insects slowly remove the flesh and loosen the teeth. Played with a stick, the carraca produces a sound that Poncho mixes electronically to intone at 432 hertz, “the frequency of the universe,” as Núñez describes it. He presents the frequency as a gift to both the dancers and the audience, saying it “automatically invites people to rest.”
Despite all this, Núñez insists his practice is not one of healing. “I want to nurture and energize my body,” he said, “but I also love this state of feeling the wounds.” He added that, “in marginalized communities, when you are communicating to the world that you are healing, you risk removing the responsibility from all the oppressive structures.” His nuanced approach to the dynamic is a sort of extension of his “vortex” method, with a focus on neither nurturing nor wounds but, rather, both, swirling together.
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