Carne Viva’s ‘Dame La Receta,’ A Dance to Feed the Soul

Carne Viva Dance Theatre’s co-director Chachi Perez, right, with dancer Genesis Castaneda work through a passage of “Dame Le Receta,” premiering at Salamander Miami in historic Overtown on Friday, Oct. 11. (Photo courtesy by Dance Place CD courtesy of The Inaugural Latinx Movement Festival)

Seated at a Coral Gables café parsing all that’s gone into their next show, which will premiere at Salamander Miami in the heart of historic Overtown on Friday, Oct. 11, the directors of Carne Viva Dance Theatre serve up details like art-struck co-conspirators.

The caffeinated drinks and empanadas laid out for consumption—with Latin music percolating in the background— blend well with the strong local taste for personal stories and craft of one of South Florida’s newest dance-theater groups.

Dancer Genesis Castaneda bangs a pot in a call to pass on life’s recipes in “Dame La Receta.” (Photo by Dance Place DC courtesy of The Inaugural Latinx Movement Festival)

“Dame La Receta” (“Give Me the Recipe”) is a show into which Chachi Pérez and David Velazco have poured plenty of social observation and soul-deep exploration. Stirred with good humor but serious aim, the title references the rituals of passing on culinary (and other) practices among families, friends and all who would claim a place at life’s banquets.

Afro-Cuban rhythms and moves help set the temperature and blend ingredients, but these creator-performers along with their collaborators—six dancers and Velvet Gruve, a fusion band from Springfield, Va. —have come up with layers of flavor everyone can savor.

Perez heads the dance and percussionist Velazco the music—though stepping out and sounding off spill over boundaries in their presentations.  The chemistry of their creative process provides a perfect match for their artistic mission.

Carne Viva Dance Theatre directors Chachi Perez, founder, and David Velazco are ready to stir up the American Dream in “Dame La Receta.” (Photo courtesy of Benny Valencia)

“David and I have this magic,” says Perez. “Together in a room we have a way of transmuting our energy and enthusiasm, so the work develops. We give each other leeway but also challenges.” Letting out a hearty laugh, the choreographer adds, “We’re always joking that he’s my work hubby.”

Through this association, Velazco recognizes he’s grown as an artist.  Before Carne Viva, he says, “I was just connecting with the music. Now connection comes not just from my perspective but from the dancers. I have to see something and react to it, playing with these women and for them. My vision is more than just beats, and that’s very unique.”

A wiz on the tumbadora, his hands hopping across the conga drums, Velazco also brings his skills as sound producer to keep “Dame La Receta” strutting forward. He has independently reclaimed the treasure of Afro-Cuban music, which he approaches as a cultural legacy—all respect to its roots in the Yoruba religion, though that didn’t figure in his evangelical upbringing.

Carne Viva’s co-director Chachi Perez, left, and dancer Genesis Castaneda at The Inaugural Latinx Movement Festival. (Photo by Dance Place DC courtesy of The Inaugural Latinx Movement)

Velazco, 28, came to Miami from his native Camagüey, Cuba, at the age of ten, and Miami-born Perez—three years younger—is the child of exiles from the island.

As Kendall residents, they met while enrolled at that area’s campus of Miami-Dade College, where Michelle Grant-Murray, the school’s coordinator of dance —“She’s like, oh, so many books of knowledge,” says Perez —recruited Velazco to play drums for a show. The professor became a mentor, and now Perez regards her as “a one-woman board of directors.”

Seeing Perez’s 2019 MDC thesis piece, “Viajando Pa La Frontera” (“Traveling to the Border”), which was both a protest against the Trump presidency’s border actions and a paean to the caravans of the undocumented, brought Velazco to tears. He says he saw his family story reflected in the oppressed gestures and hopeful strides of the dance. It seemed that a partnership between the two was inevitable.

But further studies took the soul siblings to distant locations. He was attending the California Institute of Arts (CalArts) in Santa Clarita, Calif., when COVID-19 hit, and she went on to get her BFA in 2021 from University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she maintains a home base and teaches at Philly PACK, a community-conscious theater and dance education center.

Dancer Nicole Machado leads a prayerful moment in Carne Viva’s “Dame La Receta.” (Photo courtesy of Benny Valencia)

Velazco has developed a career as a music producer and performer, most recently alongside Daymé Arocena, a Grammy-nominated Afro-Cuban jazz singer-composer.

Somewhat at loose ends after graduation, questioning her Latina identity and higher education’s stress on the Western canon, Perez retreated for a warm South Florida embrace one Thanksgiving. Heading back to Philadelphia by car with her girlfriend at the steering wheel, she rifled through notes and sent queries out to the horizon: Should she form a company? If so, what to name it? Unexpectedly, the yummiest of road treats—her father’s churrasco—answered not just the appetite but her artistic yearnings.

“I love odd things,” confesses Perez. “And there I was enjoying this carne, meat that made me feel viva, so alive. I put the two words together, and it sounded very theatrical, which is what we’re all about. My partner, well, she thought it was weird—and for me that was the perfect reaction.”

Carne Viva nonetheless translates as the tender flesh under the skin and can refer to something deeply felt, as in raw emotion—equally fitting for this company.

The group made its debut at 2022’s Cannonball Festival-Philly Fringe in Philadelphia with “Mío/Tuyo/Nuestro”—those possessive adjectives, while coming from a queer angle, the keys to rooms any love inhabits.  But soon thereafter, having shown an excerpt of “Dame La Receta” at Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), the director found herself at an impasse.  “I’d spent too many nights crying,” she admits, having confronted the hard work of running a company.

Then a drum circle on South Beach, with Velazco included, recharged Perez amid the sea breezes and alongside dancers Genesis Castaneda, Nicole Machado, and Sam Perez (Chachi’s sister). “We were just engulfed by the music,” recalls the director. “The next day I woke up to several voice messages from David, making me wonder if he was okay. But he just couldn’t stop thinking about seeing us dancing and insisted we had to take ‘Dame La Receta’ to the next level. And we haven’t stopped since.”

The Carne Viva ensemble reaches out to form human connections among different bodies, varied backgrounds. (Photo courtesy of Benny Valencia)

Having creative cohorts at different locations—the band in Virginia, dancers split between Philadelphia and Miami, and Velazco in South Florida when he’s not flying off to his own gigs around the country  — presents challenges like travel time and costs and exacting coordination.  But the music director feels the team welcomes the chance to gain enrichment from different settings, audiences, and cultural input.

To question the world in the wake of immigration, reclaiming ancestry and reshaping aspects of their immediate environment, is naturally central to these young artists’ journey. “There’s an urgency for us to disrupt and dismantle our spaces,” declares Perez, but she also insists on rebuilding by using the imagination.

“Our work seems very Latino-centric,” she continues, “but it’s truly about the complexity of living the American Dream. We’re all an extension of that, as immigrants ourselves or even if our families have been here for generations.”

Whether by way of African-American dancer Alina Spears, another Miamian trained at MDC’s Kendall Campus, or the band’s Korean-American bassist from Virginia, Daniel Ubin Burgess, for example, individual perspectives, as Perez points out, strengthen a larger sense of community for Carne Viva.  She says, “We have different backgrounds and bodies, but we’re able to tie them all in through our work.”

Drummer Javier Molina and Bassist Daniel Ubin Burgess wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “MENÉALO!” (Photo courtesy of Benny Valencia)

It’s no surprise when, walking away from lunch on a palm-shaded street in the Gables, the directors drew interested glances at what’s emblazoned on their T-shirts: “MENÉALO!” But Perez says the catch phrase—meaning “shake it”—has become popular as a call-and-response among audiences even where Spanish spice isn’t as prevalent.

“Sure, ‘Dame La Receta’ is about recipes—it’s about food,” she says. “But this comes with a universal understanding (that) our homes offer communal spaces, like our kitchens, where everyone wants to find joy. And radical joy becomes an act of rebellion. Through our stories we’re offering a mixed tape everyone can groove on.”

WHAT: Carne Viva Dance Theatre in “Dame La Receta”

WHEN: 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday, Oct. 11 and12

WHERE: Salamander Miami, 702 NW 5th Ave., Miami

COST: $26.50; $21.40 for artists and educators; $16.30 for children 8 years old and older and seniors; $14.26 for students; children 7 and younger admitted free. Tickets at www.ticketleap.events

INFORMATION:  carnevivadancetheatre.com

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com.