Y Basta Ya!

About the project

Y BASTA YA! (ENOUGH!), initiated by NAKA Dance Theater co-directors Debby Kajiyama & José Ome Navarrete Mazatl, is a multidisciplinary and multilingual performance project highlighting stories of Indigenous and Latine immigrant women. Our partner in this project is Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA), a grassroots organization promoting individual healing and community power. Y Basta Ya! engages an intimate and personal exploration of issues of race, gender violence and invisibility, and their individual and collective effects on survivors.

In this project, our intention is to cultivate a space where community members take ownership of the poetic representation of their own stories. Rather than presenting performances in traditional theater venues, we activate spaces that belong to the community in question: cultural centers, street corners, bakeries, or neighborhood parks. 

NAKA builds long term relationships with community participants  through deeply embedded engagements. The performance work emerges from a series of events and gatherings that deepen relationships with our community partners. Our process cultivates leadership and self-determination, activating community power through artmaking activities like collage, drawing, movement and storytelling.

In fall 2023, NAKA Dance Theater Co-Directors José Ome Mazatl and Debby Kajiyama and their collaborators reflected on their experiences of creating Y Basta Ya!, focusing on key artifacts, costumes and photos and reflecting on border-crossings and the loss of languages to create a dream-like, multimedia-infused Performance of the Performance. The resulting Y Basta Ya! The Performance of the Performance, is a live performance of the seven-year-long multidisciplinary and multilingual project.

The creative process happens in Circulos de Aprendizaje (Collaborative Learning Circles) – groups of women who gather regularly to creatively research and resolve problems that affect their own community. From there, they share what they have learned with their broader community and continue the learning and creative problem-solving process. Art that grows from this process has the power to be healing and transformative, cultivating personal and community liberation. 

Going forward, we will expand our work with Latine community members in different cities across the US. We strongly believe that art is a vehicle for us to connect and look deeply at the issues facing Indigenous and Latine immigrant women in a liberating way. Our work with MUA creates a framework we can apply within similar organizations across the US.

Performed at Kitchen Theater, Ithaca, NY (2024), Comité Esperanza/Comité Uva, Boyle Heights, Los Angeles (2024), EastSide Arts Alliance (2023), Rosy Simas Danse, Minneapolis (2023), Indigenous Roots Cultural Arts Center, St. Paul (2023), La Peña Cultural Center (2023), D.I.R.T. Festival at Dance Mission Theater (2023), Ohlone College (2023), EastSide Arts Alliance (2022), 24th Street and Mission BART Station/Dance Mission (2022), the Women’s Building, San Francisco (2019), EastSide Arts Alliance, Oakland (2019)

Created by NAKA Dance Theater (José Ome Navarrete Mazatl and Debby Kajiyama) in collaboration with Mujeres Unidas y Activas

Original music: David Molina, BoomShake Music

Artist Facilitators: Agustina Amiconi, Luciana Rodriguez, Cristina Lopéz-Suaréz, Emelia Martínez Brumbaugh, Juan Manuel Aldape, Rogelio López, Gizeh Muñiz

Performer-collaborators: Adriana P, Ana, Cindia, Leticia, Maria , Gema, Adriana E, Victoria, Mónica, Marilú, Damaris, Julita, Isela Carolina, Dora, Mildred, Evelyn, Nayeli

Lighting Design: Jose Maria Francos, Grisel Torres

ASL Interpreters: Yolanda Cortes Laclaustra y Valerie Avila

Photos by Scott Tsuchitani

Y Basta Ya! (Enough!) is made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation Open Spaces Grant, the City of Oakland Neighborhood Voices Grant, MAPFund, East Bay Fund for Artists, California Arts Council, San Francisco Grants for the Arts, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Zellerbach Family Foundation, the Rainin Fellowship, Dance/USA and many generous individual donors. Dance/USA Fellowships to Artists is made possible with generous funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

The presentation of Y Basta Ya! was made possible by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Center Stage initiative, produced by the New England Foundation for the Arts, in cooperation with the U.S. Regional Arts Organizations. General management for Center Stage is provided by Lisa Booth Management, Inc.

Y Basta Ya! is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by La Peña Cultural Center, Rosy Simas Danse and NPN. More information: www.npnweb.org.