Event Info

It’s been five years since Joel Mejia Smith performed and presented new dance work, the longest gap of his career. It was just prior to the spike of Covid-19 cases during the summer of 2021 when he presented a series of solos at the Broad Museum. It was a hopeful emergence back into the public sphere in what seemed like a world that was returning to some kind of normal.  That performance would unknowingly be his last, until now.

It’s been a while… is a body of work that reflects Mejia Smith’s most recent research in live dance making and digital practice, which has largely been a response to (if not a reflection of) the effects of the global pandemic. Broken into two parts, the program begins with four short dance films: “Close”, created with longstanding collaborative partner Liz Casebolt (Los Angeles) of casebolt and smith and premiered in the fall of 2019 at Marsee Auditorium in Torrance, CA, opens the program to establish a progression of where Mejia Smith has been; “Fading”, created with Mike Esperanza (New York) and premiered in 2020 at the InShadow Screen Dance Festival in Lisbon, Portugal; and “Son”, created with Mauro Sacchi (Taiwan) and premiering in 2026 as part of It’s been a while…  These three films examine the ways home can be a site of comfort and restlessness, where grief and/or loneliness are a catalyst to leave, to search for something more (or less). The films intersect in style and story, and play between personal narrative and liminal spaces of desire, where presence and absence are explored through choreography that resists conventional displays of virtuosity.  The use of juxtaposing sites – interior/exterior and home/landscape, helps each subject/s navigate shifting worlds.

Closing part one of the program is the premiere of “11th Street Studio: A Film V.1”, an experimental docustyle visual collage unfolding like a chaptered journal or series of poems (or possibly a run-on sentence tbd), reveals a collection of creative practices that were generated from Mejia Smith’s downtown Los Angeles studio from 2020 – 2022 during the Covid-19 lockdown.  Composed of digitally captured improvisational movement scores and sketches, erotic self-portrait photography, and sound designs, “11th Street…” looks at the relationship between improvisational dance, digital capture and editing techniques. A considerable part of this project was developed with scholar and artist Andrew Martinez (Los Angeles), who has contributed significant dialogue, captures, writing and comradery. Images, concepts and practices from our time together, exploring ideas around queer intimacy, collaboration and digital capture, have already been presented at the 2023 Association for Theatre in Higher Education conference in Detroit, at the 2025 Dance Studies Conference and for the 2026 Dance Research Colloquium Series curated by María Regina Firmino-Castillo in the Department of Dance at UC Riverside.

Part two of the evening is the premiere of a new solo dance “hopefully not my last”.  Mejia Smith considers this dance a check-in, a response to his aging, chronically ailing body. Built as a series of short movement phrases deriving from 5 years of documented improvisations, this solo aims to challenge his own expectations of virtuosity, prowess, and captivation while questioning what sustainability requires at the age of 50. Building nuance from impulse, clarity from fussiness, and using repetition while refusing to make sense or meaning, Mejia Smith asks… what can my body do and can I keep doing it? 

Program

7:00 PM – Culver Screening Room

Part One: Film Series
“Close” (2019) – A film by Joel Mejia Smith and Liz Casebolt, Directed by Joel Mejia Smith
“Fading” (2020) – A film by Mike Esperanza and Joel Mejia Smith, Directed by Mike Esperanza
“Son” (2026) – A film by Joel Mejia Smith and Mauro Sacchi, Directed by Joel Mejia Smith
“11th Street Studio: A Film V.1” (2026) – A film by Joel Mejia Smith and Andrew Martinez, Directed by Joel Mejia Smith

8:00 PM – Culver Center Atrium

Part Two: Live Performance
“hopefully not my last…” (2026) – Created and Performed by Joel Mejia Smith