“They offer a splendid merging/clashing of movement and light in patterns that approach and recede. Garnica and Moriya have been artistic and personal partners for 13 years. Their intimacy shows in the way that Garnica’s choreography is structured, framed, and permeated by Moriya’s lighting and Moriya’s light is populated and articulated by Garnica’s extraordinary choreography. The integration of movement and light makes Moriya’s changing visual design the eighth performer onstage.” “The work is about the interplay of the spectators’ perception and imagination with these seven bodies gaining presence in the light and losing substance in the dark, not about tricks … Continued
Article: “Revolt of the body in stillness”
“Through the example of LEIMAY’s Becoming Series stillness is theorized as revolt. It is a performative act – a radical form of action confronting the viewer as a body with agency.” “LEIMAY’s Becoming Series manifest political commitment established in its reflexive dynamics that empower subjects in their stillness.” “…the audience is absorbed by and enveloped in the enduring, exquisite, and grotesque stillness – we witness the body trigger will, memory, history, anxiety, and responsibility. The audience is invited to “become” together…” “Through the mixture of voices, sounds, light textures, and choreography of high physicality, “Borders” seeks to shrink the gap … Continued
Abstract: “More-than-human Movements: Trans-corporeal Choreographies of the Anthropocene”
“…Correspondences’ more-than-human choreographies exposes the trans-corporeal exchanges that both structure and biologically alter the performers.” “Correspondences as a case study to argue that if we are to persist through the ‘horrors of the Anthropocence,’ we must not only stay with the trouble, but move through the trouble.” –Angenette Spalink, Performing SLSA: A Roundtable on Performance Studies and the Field’s Dispersions (2024)
Book Chapter: “Gen X Butoh: LEIMAY Ensemble: Shige Moriya and Ximena Garnica”
“The work of this artistic duo has been vital to the contemporary development of butoh in New York…They have played a pivotal role as curators and community builders, and now as artists who are forging their own path, inspired by those they have encountered along the way.” “The New York Butoh Festival galvanized a new hub for butoh in the United States…With the 2003 New York Butoh Festival, New York was once again established as a beacon for butoh.” -Tanya Calamoneri, Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies (2024)