PUSHfest launches Oct 4 & 5 with an exciting lineup of national-renowned choreographers. We caught up with choreographer Hector Jaime of Xochipilli Dance Company @xochipilli_dance_company about how to keep the creative spirit alive in uncertain times.

1. Tell us a little bit about your dance background.

I am a choreographer, teacher, and shaman of movement, born in Mexicali, Baja California. My practice is rooted in Mexican history, folklore, and ritual, which I translate into contemporary dance compositions. Guided by a belief in art’s power to heal, I create works that explore identity, myth, and transformation through embodied ritual. In the Bay Area, I have built spaces where Latinx and Queer voices thrive, centering collaboration and community in my choreographic process.

2. What can audiences look forward to seeing in your work at PUSHfest?

“Bones” carries the essence of the supernatural, guiding viewers into a space where myth and memory breathe through the body. It invites audiences on an intimate journey where what is felt lingers deeply and transformation unfolds beyond words.

3. What are the major sources of inspiration for your choreography? What are you curious about?

My process honors the inseparability of human, animal, and the elemental world, allowing choreography to emerge as a living ritual. I am curious about how dance can carry memory through the body and open spaces where transformation and connection are felt. I create portals where memory becomes motion, transformation becomes possible, and connection extends into the unseen world.

4. If you hadn’t chosen this career, what might you have been doing in your life?

If I had not chosen this career, I would still be in a path of creation and ritual, perhaps through teaching, healing, or visual art. My work would still be devoted to transformation and connection, because that calling goes beyond form.

5. What does your work respond to or activate, within this world or within yourself?

My work responds to the need for spaces where the body can remember what the mind forgets. It activates ancestral presence, ritual attention, and a deep listening to the land and its cycles. Within myself, it stirs the discipline of transformation, a practice of dissolving boundaries between self and other, human and unseen. For those who witness, my work opens a shared field of sensation and awareness. I want people to feel part of something larger and recognize their own capacity for change.

6. What advice would you pass on to an aspiring choreographer?

Create. It is important that you create. You are art, and everything around you is art. You are worth making art about. Let yourself be inspired by all of it, because everything is your teacher. Trust that your work will grow through practice, attention, and courage. The most important thing is to keep making, because creation itself is the path.

DISCOUNT: Support Hector’s performance by buy $20 tickets to PUSHfest with the discount code: PUSHHECTOR