“My body has been always the best way to express myself. During my time at the University, I started to teach movement classes for anyone interested. I had no idea what I was doing but people were interested, and we built a solid community around it. It was also a time of a brutal dictatorship in Chile, and I decided to leave to look for inspiration in dance and theater. I had a duffle bag, $416, and a one-way ticket to Toronto.
My work with the Bread and Puppet Theater in Vermont taught me how to make something out of nothing and kept motivating my intuitive nature. In New York City, I worked with Latin American women that were learning how to read and write in Spanish. There were invisible social walls that divided us so much, and yet, we felt close: we were Latinas. I asked them to do “something together” acknowledging that I had no idea what it would be, and they agreed. We made shows about their lives. Spanish brought us together and our collaboration made me fall in love with the idea of putting the arts to the service of life’s complexity. This was the genesis of the Telling My story program.
Later, I developed the program more inside a correctional facility in Newport, Vermont, this time working with incarcerated men. We came together to create a community while nurturing individual and group voices. The project culminated in a final public presentation. My longtime friend and collaborator, Ivy Schweitzer, watched one of our performances and brought me down to the Upper Valley. We ended up creating a class called Telling Stories for Social Change, where Dartmouth students worked together with incarcerated men or women to break down stereotypes and experienced the power of listening and sharing their own stories.
I believe in humanity in its beauty and strength, and in nature as our primary teacher. And I believe we are experiencing profound social pain, emptiness, and fear. I believe that we spend too much time in our own heads. There are numerous visible and invisible social walls that divide us. We police one another in our activism, and we lack the self-reflection and self-criticism to ask, what is the role we play in this reality? We lack humility and vulnerability. We spend so much time categorizing people and trying to check boxes. We want to control our reality, but this ultimately is a waste of time and energy. Along the way, we lose our humanity.
I strongly believe in the power of wondrousness. It is okay to have doubts and not have answers, and even not to know. I think it is important to create spaces of trust where people can feel comfortable opening up without fear of judgment. It is important to meet people where they are and not where we want them to be. Taking a leap of faith with others has always given me the most beautiful and meaningful surprises in life.
Today, I am focused on passing this gift that has been given to me. Anyone can do this. We just need to dare to do it. I have never known what I am doing, I just know I need to do it. It is a simple idea that should not be extraordinary, but ordinary.” –Pati Hernandez, Wilder, VT.
