Choreographing Deportation in David Herrera's TOUCH

Abstract

Deportations and the threat of removal are choreographic strategies of the nation-state's ever-growing monopoly of movement through border securitization and immigration enforcement, which persists into the twenty-first century. While literature and the visual arts have received critical and popular attention by considering forced family separations, dance remains overlooked. Analyzing dance performances that relate directly to deportation teaches us not only about the painful impact of forced removal: it instructs us to decode, move and maintain relationships as aliens and citizens amid the increasing control of motion in the United States and the cruel joke offered by a nation of immigrants.