The Pop-Up Project, in partnership with La Paz Chattanooga, is hosting This Land is Your Land, a celebration of the stories, culture, and contributions of the Latin, Hispanic and Indigenous communities.
The Pop-Up Project Executive and Program Director Louie Marin-Howard said his organization and La Paz Chattanooga came together to create a program to celebrate the dreams, hopes, and struggles of these impactful communities.
“We are inviting our audience to reflect on their own sense of ancestry and what that means,” Marin-Howard said. “The movement that you’ll see is inspired by ancestry through time and the shoulders that we stand on and the shoulders that we lean against and connect on various planes.”
As the Executive and Program Director of The Pop-Up Project, he and his team of teacher artists work with the Hamilton County School System providing students educational and wellness programs through dance.
“We serve over a thousand students a week through partnerships with schools where we have in-school programming, after-school programming, and out-of-school programming, as well as programs at different city community centers or other community sites like La Paz Chattanooga and Girls Inc.,” Marin-Howard said. “We’re able to bring dance education in a way that I believe is the bridge in dance in Chattanooga. There’s a gap that The Pop-Up Project is helping to fill when it comes to dance education and movement.”
The partnership with the schools has helped The Pop-Up Project develop dance programs that celebrate all types of cultural connections for Hispanic History Month, Black History Month, and more.
“We always start within our own network of schools and sites that we’re partnering with to really identify exactly what we want to do with these community sites and what they need,” he said. “Our work is always about supporting our partners. And so out of this programming is where we were really excited to be partnering with La Paz on this and finding ways in which to be able to do this together. The Chattanooga Theatre Centre was generous enough to share their space, and this event was born to celebrate these communities and it snowballed and started to come to fruition.
Marin-Howard said they focused on collaborating with various local artists, and have created an experience the audience will enjoy.
“The dancers are beautiful,” he said. “They’re all teaching artists and have been in the studio with me for over a month working on it. We’ve been working and getting ready for this event. I’m excited.”
He said he started by asking questions like what does it mean to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month today? What does it mean to be an immigrant and why does it matter?
“As a choreographer, I began by listening. Listening to our community, listening to our artists, and listening to the history that brought us here,” he said. “All of it became part of the fabric of the work; movement, music, spoken word, imagery, storytelling, and structured improvisation. Throughout the process, we kept coming back to the idea that this work could not tell just one story of America, or one story of what it means to be Hispanic, Latino, an immigrant, a citizen, or simply a person searching for a place to belong. The work needed to hold many stories at once. There is celebration and pride, but there is also tension, uncertainty, struggle, resilience, joy and hope.”
Marin-Howard said he is also thrilled about working with local music composer Pedro Abriles.
“He’s really involved in the community,” he said. And we’re just so glad that he wanted to come in and collaborate and create a beautiful soundscape for this event.”
Marin-Howard said everything is coming together in real time as the team continues to workshop and the music is still being developed.
“For me, at the core of it, This Land is Your Land, Esta Tierra es tu Tierra, is about celebrating our shared humanity and the collective responsibility to preserve it in a time where it is so necessary to remember that,” he said. “It’s a difficult time right now. What’s happening with the Latino, Hispanic and Indigenous community here, not only in Chattanooga, but across the world and in this nation. Our goal with this event is to celebrate. It’s about bringing us together and just saying we are all in this together because we are all part of this land. It’s about the autonomy of existence.”
Marin-Howard said the event is an invitation to welcome everyone into the world of joy through dance, the power of ancestry, the idea of all who seek their own dream.
The first hour guests will start the celebration in the lobby of the Chattanooga Theatre Centre.
“We’re going to transform it into a natural state and have a beautiful soundscape,” he said. “We’re going to have dancers. There’s going to be activity tables and videos, cocktails and delicious desserts. It’s an educational moment and our hope is to be able to have this immersive experience, an art experience with our guests.”
Afterwards guests will make their way into the theater for a formal presentation with some keynote speakers, video presentations, dance and poetry.
To learn more about The Pop-Up Project visit www.thepopupproject.org.
The opening reception on Thursday, September 17th begins with cocktails at 7 p.m. at the Chattanooga Theatre Centre. There is a presentation at 8 p.m.
This Land is Your Land, Esta Tierra Es Tu Tierra
