Primera Generación Dance Collective Returns to San Francisco with Invitation from Bridge Live Arts

Primera Generación Dance Collective is ready to be back in San Francisco! We are so
excited to perform and be in community with our friends and familia in the Bay. Our last
time performing in SF was back in 2019 for the Festival of Latin American
Contemporary Choreographers. Over the years our members, Alfonso Cervera, Rosa
Rodriguez-Frazier, Irvin Manuel Gonzalez, and Patricia “Patty” Huerta, have had the
pleasure of returning in different capacities, but we are filled with joy to return together
to present our latest, full-evening length work, NOStalgia POP. We are beyond grateful
to Bridge Live Arts for the invitation to share our work and our experience as
collaborative leaders in artmaking with Co-Creating Desmadre as Futurity.

We first formed Primera Generación Dance Collective back in 2015 when the four of us
met at the University of California, Riverside. Pursuing degrees in dance, we gravitated
toward one another feeling the impact of being first-generation, Latine artists who could
not quite figure out how to navigate our artistry, identity, making, and knowledge within
the academy. Over time, our collective has fiercely rooted itself in Latinx storytelling
practices that question, visibilize, and make chaos of what being a first-gen, Mexican
American dancing body is/can be. Our process is unique in its non-hierarchical
collaboration between four, radical bodies whose diverse experiences help to shed light
on the multiple framings and possibilities found within Latinx dance and Latin American
social dance dynamics in contemporary artmaking. All four of us lead, all four us direct,
all four of us navigate care and radicality around the works we create and the
communities that we engage with. Ultimately, these approaches and methods are
rooted in our theorizing of desmadre (messiness) and its ability to shed light on the joys,
pains, triumphs, and potentials of four bodies coming together to create one
voice—Primera Generación Dance Collective.

Our newest work, NOStalgia POP, explores some of these considerations within the
realm of popular culture, taking into account the ways in which Latinidad crafts and is
crafted by mainstream depictions, iconography, popular and social dance practices, and
news. In doing so, we create a multi-modal world wherein audiences are brought on a
transformational journey told through our various vantage points. We dance, we laugh,
we tell stories, and then we do it all again in efforts to circulate Latinx maneras de ser
(ways of being) in dance, in art, and in life. Throughout, we navigate the intersections of
queerness, race, class, and gender to consider the fraught, cheeky, and powerful
connections found within constructs of Latinidad. The audience is invited to see
themselves in our stories through various lenses whether they are Latine or not.
NOStalgia POP is an adventure, a call to action, and a celebration where all bodies are
invited to consider their own connections to nostalgia and to remember and re-member
their own histories. Our work has been hailed as a “transformational journey” by the LA
Dance Chronicle and as a celebration of Latine joy by the Los Angeles Times. This year,
we have had the honor of being named to Dance Magazine’s 25 to Watch for 2025 list.
All of these triumphs are thanks to the comunidades who uphold us and support us in
our vision and mission. Join us on this ongoing journey!

We hope the San Francisco community will come dance with us for our time in the Bay
Area. We are so thankful to Bridge Live Arts for the invitation to demonstrate how
collaborative leadership looks like in choreographic work and to CounterPulse for
providing a space to premiere our work in Northern California. Catch the presentation of
NOStalgia POP on January 24 th and 25 th at 8pm and our movement workshop entitled
“Body as an Altar- Collective Gozadera” on January 26 th at 12pm. All bodies, all levels,
all experiences are welcomed!

¡Nos vemos!
Irvin Manuel Gonzalez + PGDC