Ellas y Yo: Mexicanas is a full-length dance-theatre triptych that physically embodies the legacies of Mexican women artists who forged creative freedom while navigating colonial, religious, and patriarchal constraints across centuries. Developed over the past four years, the work centers on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Frida Kahlo, and myself, a contemporary Mexican immigrant artist living and working in the United States.

As a Mexican immigrant artist, this project began from a desire to enter the physical and emotional worlds of historic Mexican women whose uncompromising artistic practices challenged dominant power structures. Through archival research and movement investigation, I embodied the lives and creative struggles of Sor Juana and Frida, then returned to my own body to examine how their histories reshape my movement vocabulary, identity, and artistic voice. The final section, Ellas y Yo: Silvita, situates my lived experience within an ongoing lineage of Mexican women who use creativity as survival, resistance, and liberation.

Each section carries a distinct physical and theatrical language. Sor Juana’s intellectual precision and spiritual rebellion are explored through choreography developed with the nun’s habit, a garment that both confined her and enabled her freedom to write. Frida Kahlo’s transformation of pain into radical self-expression informs a visceral, intimate, and surreal physical world. In Frida’s choreography, long skirts extend the body, referencing how she covered her shorter leg and how the garment became inseparable from her identity and movement. The Silvita section explores migration, grief, and belonging, revealing dance as a site of healing and agency.

Performed by six dancers embodying these women, the work unfolds in three interconnected sections—Sor Juana, Frida, and Silvita—through solos, duets, trios, and ensemble moments. Contemporary dance, physical theater, bilingual text (Spanish/English), original music, and multimedia projection create a layered theatrical experience.

Ellas y Yo: Mexicana

Choreographed by Silvita Diaz Brown, Presented as a featured offering with CLATA’s 9th Annual Chicago International Latino Theater Festival – Destinos, in partnership with the Physical Theater Festival’s Made in Chicago Residency Program

Friday, October 2. 2026 | 7:30 PM CST

Saturday, October 3, 2026 | 7:30 PM CST

Sunday, October 4, 2026 | 3:00 PM CST

Wirtz Center Chicago — Abbott Hall, Northwestern University Chicago campus

710 N Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Il
Tickets to ELLAS Y YO: MEXICANA

Director’s Note

Ellas y Yo Mexicanas emerges from a personal and cultural inquiry into what it means to inherit, resist, and reimagine Mexican identity across generations.

Ellas y Yo: Mexicanas began as a desire to be in conversation with women who came before me, women who created boldly within systems that often attempted to silence them. Through this process, I found myself not only looking back, but also inward, asking: how do their legacies live in my body, my voice, and my choices today?

The work moves between the iconic and the intimate. While Sor Juana and Frida anchor us in history, the Silvita section expands into the present, shaped through interviews with my community. Their voices became a vital part of the text, grounding the piece in lived experience and collective memory.

This is a work about continuity; about honoring, questioning, and carrying forward.

-Silvita Diaz Brown

PERFORMERS

Andrea Rivera
Avery Wilde
Bridget Grissom
Daniele (Dani) Oblitas
Derek Quesada