Alfonso Abraham Cervera and Irvin Manuel Gonzalez (elles) are artivists, community energizers, educators, and scholars. Currently, they serve as assistant professors in dance at Ohio State University, where they co-founded Fuerza e Flow, a Latinx/Latin American social dance research incubator. Their artistic collaboration lies at the intersections of cuirness, Latinidad, ritual, and activism, using dance as a medium to tell stories that highlight queer Mexicanidades. Their work explores the crafting, grooving, sweat, and potential that emerge from these lived experiences. Rooted in rascuachismo—a Chicanx, working-class, “low brow” form of creative resourcefulness—the duo dances between remembering and re-membering. They use Latin American social dance forms as tools to queer futurity, challenging the conventional uses of the body and the materials with which they work. Through their art, they incorporate spices, iconography, projections, and movement to build immersive worlds within spaces, reimagining cultural traditions to foster care, awareness, and social change. Cervera and Gonzalez have presented their work at venues such as HIGHWAYS, REDCAT (Los Angeles), El Teatro Campesino (San Jose), Judson Church (NYC), The Kennedy Center (DC), Dance Place (DC), and Dance Mission Theatre (SF). They are two of four co-founders of Primera Generación Dance Collective, a Latinx arts troupe that recently received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for the development of NOStalgia POP.
