José Ome Navarrete Mazatl

The views and opinions expressed by speakers and presenters in connection with Art Restart are their own, and not an endorsement by the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts and the UNC School of the Arts. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

José Ome Navarrete Mazatl is the co-artistic director of NAKA Dance Theater in San Francisco, CA. Since he and fellow dancer Debby Kajiyama founded NAKA in 2001, the company has worked with a wide array of communities in the Bay Area as well as internationally to explore urgent social-justice issues.

Among the communities and organizations with whom NAKA has partnered over the years are the Eastside Arts Alliance, a cultural and empowerment space for Black youth in East Oakland; Mujeres Unidas y Activas, a social- and economic-justice organization of Latina immigrant women; and Skywatchers, a group that works with formerly unhoused residents of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district to center their urgent concerns.

NAKA has presented and discussed its work all over the world, including at the Hemisphere Institute’s 2007 Encuentro in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and in 2008 and 2014 as the San Francisco representative in SCUBA’S multi-state tours. José was a 2018 U.S.-Japan Creative Artists Fellow, a 2019 Dance/USA Artist Fellow, and just this year, José was one of only six choreographers to receive a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship.

In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, José describes how the always surprising and often unpredictable input of the community members with whom he works has made him a more nimble, inventive and impactful artist.

Choose a question below to begin exploring the interview:

Pier Carlo Talenti: What in your training or education, whether as an activist or as a dancer, best prepared you for the work you’re doing today?

José Ome Navarrete Mazatl: Well, I need to tell you right now that I am in Mexico City. I was born in Mexico City in 1967, and all my education happened here. I moved to California when I was 22. Pretty much my elementary, my high school and also a little bit of my college education was formed in Mexico.

Always I was drawn by artistic expression, and because I came from a working-class family, that was not appreciated, so it was a lot of fighting for me to even tell my mother or my siblings, “Oh, I want to go to take classes.” It was so weird for them. But I managed to do that. I found a youth program that was doing jazz dance. They were working in gymnasiums, and we were doing choreography and doing presentations in other gyms in the neighborhood. I think that’s where I felt I started contemplating the idea of creating movement and creating movement work to share with communities.

And then after that with a friend of mine I started learning clowning, and we started going to hospitals. We started going to kindergartens — we were doing like children’s parties — so that really helped me a lot. I think that was pretty much the foundation that I felt, “Oh, that’s something very interesting, working very closely with communities.”

And then I decided to go to the conservatory. I did a little bit of contemporary dance and classical dancing in the Institute of Fine Arts in Mexico City before I immigrated to the United States.

Pier Carlo: What did clowning teach you that you couldn’t have learned simply from a movement-based education?

I don’t think I am a clown per se but I am a funny person, and that has allowed me to get to know the community, access different communities through being welcoming and funny and making jokes.

José: I think it was this idea of welcoming people, being funny but welcoming, and being a trickster. I love to be a trickster. [He laughs.] I did a lot of training in contact movement, and I found that when I dance with somebody, I like to trickster, I like to go to different places in movement. I think I found that I like these little moments of laughs and wiggling with the children or even putting on a funny face and trying to run with a dog or something. That was a very important skill for me, even to navigate with communities. I don’t think I am a clown per se but I am a funny person, and that has allowed me to get to know the community, access different communities through being welcoming and funny and making jokes.

Pier Carlo: So then how did you come to marry your passion for movement and clowning and being a trickster with the very serious purpose of civic engagement? How did those two develop together?

José: Well, I think it was a moment in 2001 when I founded my company, NAKA Dance Theater, with my collaborator, Debby Kajiyama. We decided to found our company because we were unrepresented in the dance community.

Pier Carlo: In what way?

José: The venues, the people … it was very white. It was very, very Eurocentric. Debby and I, we love cultures. We love cultures, and we love community. Our work is informed by these connections of cultural traditions or cultural dances that we found in our environment or in other parts of the world. I think that’s something: I couldn’t find it in my environment. I think that was one of the motifs, the impetus, for me to create my own company to support my own artistic work based on community and cultural dances at that time.

I think my first project with my company was about the Day of the Dead. We were trying to combine the Obon Festival of Japan, which also celebrates their ancestors, with the Día de los Muertos, the Mexican tradition. We were working with the Japanese community to learn the Obon dances and trying to bring the Catrina, all these figures of the dead in the Mexican culture, to mix it and put it together. That was something very interesting to me, how these cultural narratives come together, how they hybridize and come together. We found the connection to be so deep because they were honoring their ancestors. They were celebrating their families no longer here. That was something very interesting.

And then the following project was working with a Latino transgender group in the Mission.

Pier Carlo: Wow, that’s a big leap from doing a cross-cultural Day of the Dead!

José: [Laughing] Completely!

Pier Carlo: So how did that come about?

José: Well, because in order to survive, I started working in a community health center in the Mission. We were doing AIDS prevention for the monolingual Latino community. One of the things that I created was an expression of creating context, pageant context, with the members of the community there. We started making a drag-queen storytelling project with them, this kind of fantasy of sequences and very melodramatic songs and ballets and everything. It was a completely different leap from what we were doing in the previous one.

Pier Carlo: Could you explain to me what you mean when you say you taught them about creating context?

José: Well, teaching them context in the sense that we were putting their stories … . For instance, if I am talking about the Latina community, the drag or transgender community, we were interested in putting them in a scenario, in a theatrical environment that involves rehearsal, setting up a show, knowing your craft and trying to figure out the sequences with other people and making a show. The whole thing of making a show, I think that’s what I mean by bringing context in that kind of thing, using the technical platform to support their artistic endeavors.

Pier Carlo: How do you and your partner and collaborator, Debby, collaborate in coming up with new ideas and implementing them? What is your collaborative style?

José: I think we look at our lives in the political and social context of what is really happening in the world. I think how this is how we decided, “OK, we are going to do something about police brutality in the border,” because we saw the video of Anastasio Hernández Rojas being lynched in the border by 17 police officers. It really impacted me so much that I couldn’t figure out myself what to do as a citizen. When we saw it, I said, “What do we need to do? OK, let’s start to figure out what we need to do.”

At that time, I started working at East Side Arts Alliance, which is a cultural center in Oakland. I was working there, and I said, “I want to do a piece about Anastasio Hernández Rojas, the border and police brutality in the border.” And they said, “Oh, well, if you want to do that, you need to start also talking to the youth in East Oakland about brutality.” So that’s how we started working with the community of East Oakland, the youth of East Oakland, and then going with these communities to the border to meet the family of Anastasio Hernández Rojas and see the tremendous, horrifying experience of killings in the border.

I think for me to choose something, it needs to impact me the most, and in order to make sense of it, I need to navigate into these artistic illuminations for me to even keep going.

Pier Carlo: By now you’ve worked in a wide range of communities not only in San Francisco but also in Mexico and Japan. What was the most important skill you had to learn when approaching a community that was new to you?

José: When we worked with Skywatchers at the Tenderloin district in San Francisco—

Pier Carlo: Skywatchers? Who are they?

José: They are residents of the Tenderloin, single occupancy residents. It is a group run by Anne Bluethenthal where they create storytelling and movement talking about the Tenderloin, the lives in the Tenderloin. We were invited to work with them.

One thing that happened to me when I started working with Skywatchers was that we ... . I studied dance; I went to Mills; I studied contemporary dance so that I know production and I know that I need to do schedules and everything. Then when I worked with Skywatchers, it was like, “OK, we want to meet for rehearsal these times. OK, everybody, we’ll call you and everything.” And at all the rehearsals that were planned, most of them didn’t show up. I mean, they’d show up but two hours late. I was very confronted, like, “Oh my God, no, we need to move in a different way. It’s a community.”

It was really powerful to me to say, 'Wow, I don’t need to bring my set of mind on how to create production or how to create performances; I need to be able and willing to just hang out and see what happened with them.'

So we started hanging around in the community. We were not that frustrated by who didn’t show up for the rehearsal. Just being there in the community for a long time, it was like, “OK, we were supposed to work at 4, but they came at 6. That’s OK; we can start working.” By me being able and willing to spend time that way, it allowed me to see more things. It allowed me to see and hear stories of the community, find characters that were really powerful in the community, gatekeepers. It was really powerful to me to say, “Wow, I don’t need to bring my set of mind on how to create production or how to create performances; I need to be able and willing to just hang out and see what happened with them.” For me that was very powerful. They really opened me up to see something different.

Another aspect that was really powerful was that when we decided to do performances, I said, “OK, we want to do performances on Saturdays and Sundays.” We knew that some people were not that responsible in terms of coming to the show, so we did a second plan. Usually I work with collaborators — dancers and performers — and the community, so we have a lot of facilitators who can try to help the community to come together. But if the community doesn’t come together when we need them in their part, the dancers jump in as a second option to keep our project going. That for me was really powerful.

But it was also very fascinating because sometimes, even though the community members didn’t show up at the time they were supposed to be doing the show or they came late, they’d jump right in the performance. That was a beautiful, magical moment, that they came when they needed to come and whatever happened was beautiful.

Pier Carlo: Oh wow. So you’re saying if a performance started and one of your collaborator dancers was in the piece, a community dancer could come in if she was late and just take over the part midway through the performance?

José: Yes. And that was magical!

Pier Carlo: How do you think you and NAKA have impacted the field of performance up to now?

José: The thing thing is there’s so many amazing artists here that work also with communities, like Amara Tabor Smith, Dohee Lee; they’re really powerful, doing this work.

... I think that’s something that I feel people like, that we inquire about our places, our visual elements, and we work deeply, listening to the community.

I do feel that the strength that we have is to think about the work taking multiple years. The timeline to do that is big. It’s not like one year or two years; it takes a long time to gel in. And we love visuals. We love elements. We love things that are in the architecture, things that are embedded in places inside the whole history, and I think that’s something that I feel people like, that we inquire about our places, our visual elements, and we work deeply, listening to the community. I think that’s something that I think we have contributed or that is unique in the work that we do in a community: to think about time, to think about quality time, to think about breaking the structure of who we are as artists.

Pier Carlo: The timeline you’re talking about sounds very un-American and more European to me, namely the idea that great works of art take more than a year to put together. That’s a real challenge for a company that’s based in America. How do you keep it going? How do you fund it?

José: It’s extremely challenging. I think of a project called “BUSCARTE (Looking for You).” I got first funding in, let me just check here, that was 2017. I loved the project so much. It was about disappearance, full disappearance in Mexico, and I loved it so much. But after that, we didn’t get any funding. But now all these seeds that we put in at that time are growing, and we are working with families, collectives in Mexico, looking for the children, going to mass graves and becoming experts of forensic anthropology, how to deal with the government and everything. They’re really powerful, and they’re using art as a healing mechanism for them. I don’t have money to work with them, but the energy is there.

Pier Carlo: Just to be clear, this is a project that’s about people who’ve been disappeared in Mexico, right?

José: Yes.

Pier Carlo: I see. And so you’re saying there’s people who are becoming forensic anthropologists in the community just to find out where they’ve gone?

José: Yes. And because we have been building a relationship, those relationships are becoming really strong right now, and it’s making me think … . Because at one time, maybe in like 2019, I said like, “OK, I’m going to wrap up ‘BUSCARTE;’ I’m going to close it. This is it for ‘BUSCARTE.’” And then it wasn’t. It is still alive, and it’s still emerging from so many places that I think I need to really see what is really happening with the seeds I put in. I am working with these amazing collectives with no resources, but it’s extremely powerful.

That is the work that I need to be doing. It’s inspiring; it’s teaching me so much. It’s making me think about how important it is to create memory for the people they are looking for, how to activate streets by doing that, by creating their memory. Because the government is not able to support that. They’re erasing those identities. For me, it’s really powerful.

Pier Carlo: Finally, if you could go back and meet yourself when you were in high school and college, what piece of advice would be particularly useful to the young José as he’s starting to craft his career?

José: Well, definitely to make deep connections with people that have a cultural experience. I think for me, working with Mujeres Unidas y Activas and having the experience of being an immigrant is very powerful to me because I did that — I am an immigrant — and it’s very powerful to me, to my relationship with them. I am grassroots. I am a base community because I understand what it is to be an immigrant. That’s how I feel my connection.

Then also I find it very funny when there is a cultural element that everybody knows and I reemphasize it, like, “Oh yeah, you like that song? Oh yeah, that’s Fergie’s song!” Trying to use cultural elements to bring people together, I think that’s something that maybe I learned when I was a little young. Like, “Oh, OK, let’s sing that song that everybody knows.” Creating connections through popular culture gives me an access to meet people from different backgrounds in a different way sometimes, I feel. I don’t know. I think it was very abstract, what I shared with you.

Pier Carlo: No, it makes sense to me. I think it’s kind of meeting people where they’re at rather than being an artist coming from outside and being prescriptive. It’s just finding what already gets them excited.

I think that’s the magic of working with communities, seeing what they’re excited about and trying to support that. And of course, trying to support that and make them think a little bit more differently, trying to advance their own process, their transformation.

José: Yeah, that’s right. I think that’s the magic of working with communities, seeing what they’re excited about and trying to support that. And of course, trying to support that and make them think a little bit more differently, trying to advance their own process, their transformation.

Pier Carlo: Actually, I do have another question. You were recognized with a Guggenheim fellowship, which is a big deal. How important was that?

José: I wasn’t expecting that. [He laughs.] To tell you the truth, I wasn’t expecting that. I have seen the changes at Guggenheim — now the panelists, they’re looking for something different —but I wasn’t expecting to get it. I don’t know why, maybe because my work is very grassroots, something that involves a community, a very local community, hyper-local. I’m not interested in European perspectives, looking at my work, on my artistic work. I’m not interested in that. I am really interested in cultures that elevate your liberation. I think that’s what I’m striving for.

I wanted to be able to reflect and inquire deeply on my ancestral knowledge, all the knowledge that has been passing through generations through generations, as a way of resisting this imperialism/colonialism that still exists in us. For me, it’s very important to reclaim, refine that knowledge and find those connections when navigating my life. That’s what I’m looking for.

The more I go and see, even the healing processes of my culture, the more I look at it, the more people are interested. And there is more information available for us in that way. It is very powerful.

Pier Carlo: So you’re definitely seeing a change?

José: Oh, definitely. I feel like we are reclaiming our ancestral power and knowledge. I love that. It’s very powerful to me. I am promoting that as well as finding new ways within that ancestral culture, new ways to move, new ways to navigate, new ways to talk. Yeah, that’s what I’m interested in.

December 13, 2021