Irvin Gonzalez

Faculty Bio

Irvin Manuel Gonzalez (he/him/his) is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Riverside in the Critical Dance Studies Program. His research analyzes quebradita, a Mexican/Mexican American social dance form. Gonzalez considers how immigrant, queer, and working-class quebradita dancers construct mexicanidades to navigate trans/national politics. He examines how affective affiliations between quebradores/as/xs, on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, are embodied to forge belonging as strategy. In doing so, Gonzalez theorizes the body as an archive of movement that brown dancers use to resist xenophobia/homophobia and the instability of neoliberal economies. He is a founding member of Primera Generación Dance Collective (PGDC) and a board member for Show Box Los Angeles (SBLA) and the Dance Studies Association (DSA).

As a dance artist, he revels in the potentials of collaborations. Gonzalez emphasizes how people connect to produce new aesthetics and affectivities, often looking to dismantle notions of the "solo artist" by highlighting how bodies are always already ancestrally-connected and linked to one another through emotions and experiences. Focusing on the investigation of ‘mexicanidades’ as a communal formation, his collective, PGDC, fuses their various trainings and dance knowledges (modern, postmodern, jazz, cumbia, quebradita, salsa, and contact improvisation) to develop ways of moving that speak to the concept/ualization of mestizaje. As such, PGDC highlights the plural desires that stem from different notions of brownness and brown belonging.

He has had the honor of presenting dance work at the Society of Dance History Scholars Conference in 2013 (Riverside), Redcat (LA), HIGHWAYS Performance Space (LA), Kennedy Center for the Arts (DC), Bootleg Theater (LA), Dance Mission Theater (SF), Human Resources (LA) and most recently at Judson Church for Movement Research (NYC). In 2016 he was awarded DANCE Magazine's award "Outstanding Student Choreography" for his collaborative role in "fourtold," and in 2020 his collective was awarded with a residency at we live in space (LA) and Pieter Performance Space (LA).

Scholarly/Creative Research Interests:

- Mestizaje/Latinidad

- Latinx Social Dance Forms

- Brown Affectivity/Affect Studies

- Queer/Cuir Aesthetics

- Migration/Immigration/Transnationalism

- Rasquachismo

- Aesthetics of Failure

- Neoliberalism