About Us
Grito Viejito is a research-creation project that re-imagines the Mexican Danza de los Viejitos (Dance of the Old Men). In the folkloric dance, children or young adults use a mask and cane to perform exaggerated movements of the elderly. The figures should be humorous, but as a child growing up in South Texas in the 1970s, project founder Dolissa Medina would watch young people in parades with sunken cheeks and bent bodies, and was scared by this uncanny sight. This uncanny feeling returned to her in the 1980s as she watched her 25-year-old cousin using a cane, his face gaunt from AIDS.
Responding to these experiences, Medina began Grito Viejito with her long-time HIV+ friend Gera Ananias P. Soria. Together, they have taken Medina’s teenage memories of a young man made old before his time, and reclaimed it through participatory, interdisciplinary filmmaking that documents queer brown stories through costumes, movement, and intergenerational exchange.
Current members of the Grito Viejito collective
Artist Bios
GRITO VIEJITO
Dolissa Medina
Project Founder
Dolissa Medina is a filmmaker, writer, and organizer from the borderlands of South Texas. Her films have screened in numerous film festivals and museums including The Whitney, Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art, Palacio de Bellas Arts in Mexico City, and International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Ananias P. Soria
Collaborator
Ananias P. Soria is a multidisciplinary artist interested in transformative energetic expression through movement, music and dance.