This performance is presented in partnership with Arte Mexicano en Indiana.

The Crushing Weight of Absence is a work in progress solo dance piece by Andrea Garay that dialogues with the concept of absence in three different levels: what is not there, what has never been there, and with the absence left by loss in distinct ways. Losing a friend, losing an object, losing a dream, losing a belief, losing yourself. Absence as an empty space which was formed or has always been like that and which seeks, through reflection, the understanding of its ephemeral nature and its ambiguous quality.

“This piece works with some feelings I’ve been struggling with lately, directly and indirectly, and this has been a living investigation of this concept in my surroundings. The following questions have been a starting point to develop this work: What weighs more, what is there and is lost or what has never been there? And, why do the unsaid things weigh so much? The piece is constructed by small images and moments of reflection to address absence as loss but also as a possibility, looking for alternatives to reduce the weight we give to what is not there by accepting and embracing it, in order to find lightness.”

Andrea Garay is a Mexican performing artist and choreographer, with a formal education in contemporary dance and a huge interest in movement.​ She is Co-director of Nómada Proyecto Escénico, a multidisciplinary dance collective in Mexico City, Co-founder of Hekatômbe Producción Artística and former member of the performance collective “Exploraciones Escénicas Indisciplinadxs.”

​She has focused her career on the investigation of movement as a form of communication. Andrea works with the integration of different elements and textures in stage in order to generate enveloping environments to create memorable experiences in the audience. She seeks to evoke sensibility and invites the public to reflect on the concepts she works with in her pieces. She uses improvisation and contemporary forms of movement to articulate body language.