"There are ethnographic aspects of my work, but I’m not a full-on ethnographer. Going places, learning about things, and talking about those things and the experiences I’ve had within my work is a big part of what I do. But it’s also a big part of how I live. For example, experiencing the sonidero dance scene in Mexico City was an interest, but I didn’t set out to make a work about it. It started out as research for research’s sake, and it ended up in my choreography as a retelling of my experience, not as a how-to. It was simply: 'This is what happened when I went there.' My work is often a sort of introspective-retrospective. Sonidero was a populous way for me to experience somewhere else that represents a marginality I’ve always experienced within myself. There is power in finding commonality. I find that going places and experiencing the margin of other people makes it more obvious to me that more people are marginal."
Read more about archival and authoring in Mariana Valencia's conversation with Emmaly Wiederhold in Stance on Dance.