A DECADE OF RADICAL MOVEMENT at FLACC
For over a decade, FLACC has featured resistant, queer, indigenous, and hybrid choreographers based in the United States and Latin America. across studios and stages, along borders real and imagined, inside theaters and outside on the land. FLACC was created to be the first festival on the west coast that departed from the traditional and folkloric dance forms that typically represent latine constituencies
Between Inheritance and Invention: FLACC’s First Years
The Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers (FLACC) emerged from a powerful convergence of artistic urgency and cultural inquiry. Born from a need for visibility and representation, FLACC emerged as a bold experiment:
WHAT DOES A LATINX CONTEMPORARY DANCE MOVEMENT OR METHOD LOOK LIKE? WHAT GETS INCLUDED IN THAT VISION AND WHAT GETS LEFT BEHIND? WHAT ASPECTS OF TRADITION ARE PRESERVED WHEN WE BUILD A NEW ONE?
These provocations, articulated in early panel conversations, were the foundation of FLACC’s identity. Founder Liz Duran Boubion envisioned a space for artists making work that was non-traditional, border-crossing, rule-breaking, queer, avant-garde, and experimental. Rather than defining what Latinx performance should be, FLACC asked: What new traditions can emerge when we make space for multiplicity, contradiction, and transformation? What happens when a movement is allowed to unfold, rather than conform?
Panelists at the second festival spoke candidly about navigating white-dominated dance institutions, grappling with internalized doubts about their own Latinidad, and confronting the real-life consequences of racism, tokenization, and marginalization. Artists wrestled with the pressures of representing a Latino identity within predominantly white institutions, and the ongoing labor of translating their stories—for audiences, for institutions, and even for their own families.
Panelists at the second festival spoke candidly about navigating white-dominated dance institutions, grappling with internalized doubts about their own Latinidad, and confronting the real-life consequences of racism, tokenization, and marginalization. Artists wrestled with the pressures of representing a Latino identity within predominantly white institutions, and the ongoing labor of translating their stories—for audiences, for institutions, and even for their own families.
Yet FLACC also made visible what had long been present but unrecognized: a growing, thriving network of Latinx artists working across methods, aesthetics, and lived experiences. The festival became not just a stage but a ceremony, a ritual gathering grounded in shared stories and diverse methodologies. Choreographers spoke of working with undocumented students, of creating in Spanglish, of queering narrative through repetition and abstraction. Some drew directly from their families, their migration stories, their maternal identities, while others reveled in making audiences uncomfortable—forcing visibility where there had once been silence.
What FLACC offered was not a resolution to the questions it was born from, but a durable space to keep asking them. A decade later, the conversations continue to evolve. The festival’s earliest years serve as a reminder that cultural movements don’t emerge fully formed—they are sculpted in real time, by artists daring to imagine what a truly inclusive, self-determined Latino contemporary dance space can look like.
What FLACC offered was not a resolution to the questions it was born from, but a durable space to keep asking them. A decade later, the conversations continue to evolve. The festival’s earliest years serve as a reminder that cultural movements don’t emerge fully formed—they are sculpted in real time, by artists daring to imagine what a truly inclusive, self-determined Latino contemporary dance space can look like.
Learn more about the Early questions in conversation that defined FLACC's First years
Movement as Survival
The years between 2016 and 2020 were marked by a wave of violence, loss, and systemic assault on Latinx, queer, and immigrant communities in the U.S. In June 2016, the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando targeted queer Latinx joy, taking forty-nine lives and shaking the heart of a community that already danced on the edge of visibility. That same year, Donald Trump was elected president after running a campaign that vilified Mexicans, mocked immigrants, and promised walls—rhetorical and real. His administration followed through with policies that separated families, increased ICE raids, and normalized xenophobia as part of national discourse.
Within this atmosphere, FLACC didn’t just offer a platform—it offered sanctuary. It became a place where dance was not simply artistic expression, but an act of survival, resistance, and memory. In a moment when Latinx people were being stereotyped, surveilled, and scapegoated, FLACC insisted on complexity, humanity, and presence. The festival created space for stories too often silenced: of queer migration, of ancestral grief, of joy that persists even under threat. The stage became a site of reclamation—a way to move through trauma and into collectivity.
As the decade came to a close, another global rupture hit: the COVID-19 pandemic. Latinx communities were disproportionately affected, both economically and medically, and many artists were forced to pause or adapt their work in order to survive. In this context, FLACC's commitment to community care and experimentation became even more vital. Whether through digital adaptation or mutual support, the festival remained a connective thread for artists navigating isolation, uncertainty, and loss.
During this era, movement was more than choreography—it was a form of staying alive. And FLACC, by holding space for that movement, became more than a festival. It became a lifeline.
Within this atmosphere, FLACC didn’t just offer a platform—it offered sanctuary. It became a place where dance was not simply artistic expression, but an act of survival, resistance, and memory. In a moment when Latinx people were being stereotyped, surveilled, and scapegoated, FLACC insisted on complexity, humanity, and presence. The festival created space for stories too often silenced: of queer migration, of ancestral grief, of joy that persists even under threat. The stage became a site of reclamation—a way to move through trauma and into collectivity.
As the decade came to a close, another global rupture hit: the COVID-19 pandemic. Latinx communities were disproportionately affected, both economically and medically, and many artists were forced to pause or adapt their work in order to survive. In this context, FLACC's commitment to community care and experimentation became even more vital. Whether through digital adaptation or mutual support, the festival remained a connective thread for artists navigating isolation, uncertainty, and loss.
During this era, movement was more than choreography—it was a form of staying alive. And FLACC, by holding space for that movement, became more than a festival. It became a lifeline.
WHEN OUR COMMUNITIES ARE UNDER ATTACK, HOW DO YOU SHOW UP FOR OTHERS, FOR YOURSELF, FOR THE FUTURE? HOW DO YOU MOVE IN THE FACE OF FEAR, GRIEF, AND ERASURE? WHAT DOES YOUR BODY REMEMBER, AND WHAT WILL IT REFUSE TO FORGET?
Timeline of FLACC Response to U.S. & Global Events
click the buttons to learn about FLACC over the years
Indigenous Histories and Healing with the natural world
In the wake of global rupture, FLACC entered a period of reconnection—returning to land, lineage, and the spiritual dimensions of movement. From 2021 to 2023, the festival embraced a theme rooted in both mourning and motion Dancing and mourning on ancestral waterways and in changing winds. This was a time of grief, but also of ceremony: a collective turning toward the earth for guidance and grounding.
These years saw a growing emphasis on ritual performance, intergenerational memory, and eco-justice. As climate catastrophe accelerates and Indigenous land protectors continue to face violence, FLACC has become a space for remembering what dominant systems try to erase: sacred sites, ancestral practices, and the interconnectedness of body and land. Performances in these years moved outdoors—over ancestral waterways—and invited audiences to witness dance as offering, protest, and prayer.
Artists honored those lost to colonialism, environmental destruction, and COVID-19. Others invoked ancestral memory to navigate healing, diaspora, and renewal. This wasn’t simply about the past—it was a call to live more responsibly in the present. To not only move on the land, but also with it. FLACC invited audiences to slow down, to return to ceremony, to move in ways that listen—to wind, to water, to grief, and to hope—to understand the body as an archive and the earth as a collaborator.
These years saw a growing emphasis on ritual performance, intergenerational memory, and eco-justice. As climate catastrophe accelerates and Indigenous land protectors continue to face violence, FLACC has become a space for remembering what dominant systems try to erase: sacred sites, ancestral practices, and the interconnectedness of body and land. Performances in these years moved outdoors—over ancestral waterways—and invited audiences to witness dance as offering, protest, and prayer.
Artists honored those lost to colonialism, environmental destruction, and COVID-19. Others invoked ancestral memory to navigate healing, diaspora, and renewal. This wasn’t simply about the past—it was a call to live more responsibly in the present. To not only move on the land, but also with it. FLACC invited audiences to slow down, to return to ceremony, to move in ways that listen—to wind, to water, to grief, and to hope—to understand the body as an archive and the earth as a collaborator.
WHOM DO YOU REMEMBER, MOURN, OR HONOR WHEN YOU MOVE? WHAT PART OF THE EARTH CALLS YOU TO DANCE?
El Grito: A Cry for liberation, Truth and Transformation
El Grito (the Cry/Scream) is a historically rooted demonstration that takes place every year on September 16, marking Mexican Independence Day. It commemorates the moment in 1810 when Father Miguel Hidalgo stood in the town of Dolores, Mexico, and urged the people to rise up against Spanish colonial rule. With a fiery call and response—crying out the names of revolutionaries and receiving the resounding answer, “¡Viva!”—Hidalgo sparked a movement for liberation that continues to reverberate today.
FLACC honors El Grito as a living form of resistance, community gathering, and cultural survival. It calls people together for social change, honors those who fought before us, and ignites action in the present. El Grito represents a refusal to stay silent in the face of injustice—a cry for truth, visibility, and transformation.
In 2020, as the world was engulfed by pandemic, censorship, and violence, FLACC reimagined El Grito through digital performance and dialogue. Artists and organizers issued their own cries: against colonial erasure, against gendered violence, and against cultural invisibility.
In 2024, FLACC returned to El Grito with renewed urgency, connecting the cry for liberation in Mexico to global struggles for freedom, most visibly in solidarity with Palestine. Artists asked what it means for a grito to travel across borders, to echo in occupied lands, and to resonate in the bodies of those who carry histories of displacement and resistance. Performances became living testaments—cries against settler colonialism, against cultural erasure, and for the survival of Indigenous and diasporic communities everywhere. By weaving together traditional forms with experimental practices, the gritos of 2024 reminded us that liberation is never singular: every voice raised for justice amplifies another.
FLACC honors El Grito as a living form of resistance, community gathering, and cultural survival. It calls people together for social change, honors those who fought before us, and ignites action in the present. El Grito represents a refusal to stay silent in the face of injustice—a cry for truth, visibility, and transformation.
In 2020, as the world was engulfed by pandemic, censorship, and violence, FLACC reimagined El Grito through digital performance and dialogue. Artists and organizers issued their own cries: against colonial erasure, against gendered violence, and against cultural invisibility.
In 2024, FLACC returned to El Grito with renewed urgency, connecting the cry for liberation in Mexico to global struggles for freedom, most visibly in solidarity with Palestine. Artists asked what it means for a grito to travel across borders, to echo in occupied lands, and to resonate in the bodies of those who carry histories of displacement and resistance. Performances became living testaments—cries against settler colonialism, against cultural erasure, and for the survival of Indigenous and diasporic communities everywhere. By weaving together traditional forms with experimental practices, the gritos of 2024 reminded us that liberation is never singular: every voice raised for justice amplifies another.
WHAT DO YOU LIVE FOR, CRY FOR, FIGHT FOR? VÍVA QUÉ? VÍVA QUIEN? VÍVA POR QUÉ? WHO HAS MOVED YOU TOWARDS LIBERATION? WHAT, WHO, HOW DO WE HONOR OUR SOURCES OF INSPIRATION OR SURVIVAL? IN WHAT WAYS CAN YOU CALL OR RESPOND TO YOUR COMMUNITY RIGHT NOW? HOW DOES EL GRITO EXIST IN YOUR BODY?
Sanctuary in 2025
This year, FLACC returns with SANCTUARY—a theme that shifts from responding to rupture toward cultivating freedom. If past years were shaped by external crises—violence, xenophobia, a global pandemic--Sanctuary returns to the roots of FLACC’s inception by asking: what happens when we create from a place of safety, rather than survival?
It is an intentional act of decolonization, refusing to let the festival be defined only in opposition to harm. Sanctuary opens space for artists to imagine futures not bound by crisis, but by joy, pleasure, and liberation. In centering creative freedom, the festival reminds us that survival is not the end of the story; what matters is how we thrive, how we dream, and how we move when our bodies are no longer only bracing against the world. Sanctuary will take place on October 18th at Dance Mission Theater in San Francisco.
It is an intentional act of decolonization, refusing to let the festival be defined only in opposition to harm. Sanctuary opens space for artists to imagine futures not bound by crisis, but by joy, pleasure, and liberation. In centering creative freedom, the festival reminds us that survival is not the end of the story; what matters is how we thrive, how we dream, and how we move when our bodies are no longer only bracing against the world. Sanctuary will take place on October 18th at Dance Mission Theater in San Francisco.
