Direct Care: A Performance

Direct Care was performed at Oxy Arts on Sunday, April 4, 2021.
Direct Care is a site-specific choreographic performance in response to the Care Report exhibition, exploring the dynamics, gestures, and aesthetics of social movement and protest, rooted in feminine and femme care rituals. Performed and choreographed by Patricia Huerta, Jose Richard Aviles and Elizabeth Villalobos.
About the Performers:
Patricia “Patty” Huerta (Los Angeles, CA) is an artist, choreographer and educator bringing forth First Generational Latinx experiences through dance-making. She has presented work at RedCat, The FORD, Grand Park, FLACC Festival, Mission Dance Theater, and more. Patricia received her B.A. and M.F.A in Dance and Experimental Choreography from the University of California, Riverside and is currently an active performer and co-founder of Primera Generación Dance Collective, active member of Dancing Diaspora Collective and a board member of Show Box L.A.
Jose Richard Aviles is a multimedia artist, Urban Planner, and Social Worker based out of Los Angeles. As a former organizer with the Bus Riders Union and current Bus Rider, Aviles is interested in the stories of the countless people that rely on public transportation. Currently, Aviles is working on their second full evening length work, Semilla, that explores the relationship between intergenerational trauma and the memories of the built environment.
Elizabeth Villalobos received her Bachelors Degree in Dance from the University of California, Riverside. Elizabeth has furthered her professional dance career by dancing with various companies including Counter Point, Goblin Party USA, and Calliopus Contemporary. She specializes in modern and contemporary dance but is also trained in hip-hop, jazz, and improvisation. Beyond her dance career, Elizabeth is a freelance model and runs a fashion blog that has been featured in NBC Radio, Voyage LA Magazine, Modeliste Magazine, and Calvin Klein. Elizabeth will continue pursuing her professional careers in hopes of paving the way for future Latinx dancers and creatives.
About the Carolina Caycedo: Care Report exhibition:
In the midst of a global pandemic, social unrest, and a planet undergoing the devastating effects of climate change and land extraction, Care Report is an invitation to stand in solidarity with the activist movements of womxn across the globe, to engage in the programs and collective actions connected to the exhibit and to imagine a collective future free of extractivist ecological destruction, dispossession, and violence against both human and non-human life.
Care Report celebrates the expansive and often invisible power of physical, political, and domestic labor performed by womxn. The exhibition is comprised of a large scale collage of historical and recent documentation of global feminist-led environmental movements in conversation with Caycedo’s hand-labored sculpture Milk, a series of banners bearing political and spiritual statements, and the temporary mural In Yarrow We Trust portraying the powerful, healing yarrow plant.
Carolina Caycedo is the 2020-21 Wanlass Artist-in-Residence. Caycedo’s practice is centered on vital issues of environmental justice, power relations, and organized resistance. Her work contributes to the construction of environmental historical memory as a fundamental element for non-repetition of violence against human and non-human entities.