ELEPHANT

For the past year I have been working with a group of incredible women on a project about street harassment titled Elephant. The idea behind this video is to reclaim our bodies>

Elephant a short choreo-film entirely produced by women of color against street harassment. The video is the collective effort of a group of interdisciplinary artists from New York City who came together to highlight the importance of looking at street harassment from a lens of reclamation of power.

Through interpretative dance, visual art and figurative language the video guides us on an experiential journey that invites the viewer into what women go through by simply walking down the street. The idea is that a woman’s body is often not her own, it is often whatever a patriarchal society has claimed it to be. We believe that all people who identify as women as well as gender nonconforming individuals who are impacted by street harassment have a right to their bodies and in this video we take our bodies back.

The video is a film adaption of a poem written by Nuyorican Poet Elisabet Velasquez and it is performed by dancer and choreographer Keomi Tarver. The video was directed, filmed and edited by Connie Chavez and produced by Wendy Angulo.