coming up ….
FEB 11-14, 2026
XILOPANGO
Presented by MAI, Montreal Arts Interculturels
Carried by breath, ritual, and grounded choreography, Xilopango is a contemporary dance production that reflects the artist’s maternal lineage. It traverses the lives of Villafuerte’s great-grandmother, an Indigenous seamstress who raised fourteen children; her grandmother, a nurse who was forcibly disappeared during the Salvadorian civil war; her mother, a political activist who fled military persecution and resettled in Canada; and the artist herself, a daughter of diaspora who bears the weight of their stories in her body. But this is not just personal history. It speaks to a broader, embodied experience shared by many Salvadorians. The work transforms grief into connection and invites the audience to witness a return—not only to place, but to self, to memory, and to love. Told through the voice of the Land itself, it is a tender excavation of the quiet strength that endures from one generation to the next.