MFA Performance Thesis: ¿Con Qué Se Come?

Queer Chicanx Dance Theater - Reimagining the quinceañera as ritual, exclusion, and belonging through abstraction and memory.
¿Con Qué Se Come? is an evening-length dance theater work by Gilberto Martinez Martinez, presented as part of UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance MFA Upstart Series. This choreographic project investigates the cultural, religious, and social structures embedded within the quinceañera tradition and considers their impact on queer Chicanx subjectivity. The performance draws from its emotional and ceremonial logics: procession, preparation, spectacle, communal celebration, and expectation, to construct an abstracted world of ritual and transformation. The cast, composed primarily of women-identifying dancers, foregrounds the performativity of femininity within the tradition while making visible questions of authorship, memory, and outsider perspective.
The work unfolds through narrativized physical embodiment as the dancers prepare for and have the quinceañera. Movement is developed through gestural research, familial ritual practices, Catholic iconography, collective improvisation, and social dance vernaculars that echo the celebratory aesthetics of a quinceañera. The sonic landscape features culturally resonant tracks like La Llorona, Amor Eterno, amongst others, alongside intentional moments of silence, creating space for reflection and emotional tension. Costuming is inspired by the floral embroidery seen in Mexican and Chicanx attire - florals of the land once called home. At its core, ¿Con Qué Se Come? asks how choreography can intervene in inherited cultural structures. How do we honor tradition while confronting its exclusions? And how might new forms of ritual emerge from within those tensions? But ultimately, how can we, as queer people, be a part of a celebration that was not meant for us?

Photography captured by: Gunindu Abeysekera