My rolled-up tobacco 

Lights it up from the inside. 

[It lights up] your beautiful word-in-the-song

Which is expanded by the rolled-up tobacco, 

By my rolled-up tobacco 

The interior essence of your body 

I will make soft [like velvet],

So that it may receive the good luck. 

This I will do for you….

•  Rosa Valera, a Shipibo singer’s tobacco healer chant

Iyapokatzin; the venerable tobacco smoke is a choreographic work that honors the history of tobacco from a Mexican perspective through Marcela Torres’ years of research and devotion to tobacco as a deity. Iyapokatzin is a Nawatl word and translates to “venerable tobacco smoke”.

Torres began their relationship with tobacco through smoking cigars; a mouthful of earthen smoke became an immersive caretaker. A ventilator of ancestral flavors uniting their contemporary breath and realities with those from the past.  The phenomenon of smoking land and its history sparked curiosity about tobacco’s legacy, spirituality and ceremonial usages. Iyapokatzin looks at the narrative of tobacco to tell parallel stories of colonization and diaspora felt by the botanical world and contemporary Latinx folx. It is a ceremony that defines a new queer embodiment and marks new futures with our ancestral planty deities. With their collaborators, Torres uses their queer Mexican experience to mutate, improvise traditional dance forms and create moments of spiritual exaltation with their ancestors and spiritual guides. The contemporary relationship between Torres and cigars creates another generational bond with tobacco as an ancestor, healer and messenger. Iyapokatzin is the building of a ceremony, the legacy of the tobacco plant is also a history of people. 

Iyapokatzin is made in collaboration with Izayo Mazehualli. Mazehualli is an instructor of the Azteka-Chichimeka dance tradition and Nahua martial arts. He has spent over a decade learning rituals through stories, research, music-making and dance. His movement practice is a spiritual offering and philosophical commitment to the Teteoh, deities of the Mesoamerican pantheon. Mazehualli is an artist who makes his wealth of knowledge accessible by conducting ceremonies, leading dance groups, teaching youth and making ancestral vegan foods. Torres, as student of Mazehualli, was given dances that speak to Torres’s ancestral sojourner, allowing for further closeness to their tobacco, fire deity.

Together Torres, Mazehualli offer Iyapokatzin, with an open rite to the Azteka deity Tezcatlipoca through a celebration of fire to honor the tobacco messenger. Torres employs Folklórico movement to narrate the history of rolling tobacco within historical factories in Veracruz, MX. Torres plays with live smoke and blends traditional steps with their intuitive embodied dance, a mixture of house dance, industrial music desires and martial arts reactionary movements. Sections of this ritual are made in collaboration with LA Spacer, who has created a companion musical score for the performance that includes traditional Azteka-Chichimeka drum beats and Veracruz regional folk style Son jarocho. 

The first two performances will be held near adobe monuments constructed by Torres and the third performance will be held in a location that is important to the performers. Torres created adobe brick monuments that serve as sites of mediation and celebration of Mesoamerican natural spirituality. Two performances will be within the monuments at El Paseo Community Garden in Chicago on October 1st and Franconia Sculpture Park in Minneapolis on September 24th. The third performance will occur in Malinalli Garden on October 2nd, in Chicago’s neighborhood of Little Village. Malinalli Garden has been renovated over the last four year by The Maz Maiz Collective, The VPC and other community organizations. Malinalli Garden is a meeting place for Mitotiliztli Mesoamérican Traditional dance group. 

Iyapokatzin was made with the support of the Chicago DanceMakers Forum, Lab Artist Program. Mentorship given by Gabriela Mendoza-Garcia and Yanira Castro. 

*This work will employ aroma and smoke as main characters. Please be aware if you have allergies, you may want to wear a mask or sit farther from the stage. 

1 Bernd Brabecc de Mori, “Singing White Smoke” in The Master Plant (Italics), 100-101. City: 

My rolled-up tobacco 

Lights it up from the inside. 

[It lights up] your beautiful word-in-the-song

Which is expanded by the rolled-up tobacco, 

By my rolled-up tobacco 

The interior essence of your body 

I will make soft [like velvet],

So that it may receive the good luck. 

This I will do for you….

•  Rosa Valera, a Shipibo singer’s tobacco healer chant

Iyapokatzin; the venerable tobacco smoke is a choreographic work that honors the history of tobacco from a Mexican perspective through Marcela Torres’ years of research and devotion to tobacco as a deity. Iyapokatzin is a Nawatl word and translates to “venerable tobacco smoke”.

Torres began their relationship with tobacco through smoking cigars; a mouthful of earthen smoke became an immersive caretaker. A ventilator of ancestral flavors uniting their contemporary breath and realities with those from the past.  The phenomenon of smoking land and its history sparked curiosity about tobacco’s legacy, spirituality and ceremonial usages. Iyapokatzin looks at the narrative of tobacco to tell parallel stories of colonization and diaspora felt by the botanical world and contemporary Latinx folx. It is a ceremony that defines a new queer embodiment and marks new futures with our ancestral planty deities. With their collaborators, Torres uses their queer Mexican experience to mutate, improvise traditional dance forms and create moments of spiritual exaltation with their ancestors and spiritual guides. The contemporary relationship between Torres and cigars creates another generational bond with tobacco as an ancestor, healer and messenger. Iyapokatzin is the building of a ceremony, the legacy of the tobacco plant is also a history of people. 

Iyapokatzin is made in collaboration with Izayo Mazehualli. Mazehualli is an instructor of the Azteka-Chichimeka dance tradition and Nahua martial arts. He has spent over a decade learning rituals through stories, research, music-making and dance. His movement practice is a spiritual offering and philosophical commitment to the Teteoh, deities of the Mesoamerican pantheon. Mazehualli is an artist who makes his wealth of knowledge accessible by conducting ceremonies, leading dance groups, teaching youth and making ancestral vegan foods. Torres, as student of Mazehualli, was given dances that speak to Torres’s ancestral sojourner, allowing for further closeness to their tobacco, fire deity.

Together Torres, Mazehualli offer Iyapokatzin, with an open rite to the Azteka deity Tezcatlipoca through a celebration of fire to honor the tobacco messenger. Torres employs Folklórico movement to narrate the history of rolling tobacco within historical factories in Veracruz, MX. Torres plays with live smoke and blends traditional steps with their intuitive embodied dance, a mixture of house dance, industrial music desires and martial arts reactionary movements. Sections of this ritual are made in collaboration with LA Spacer, who has created a companion musical score for the performance that includes traditional Azteka-Chichimeka drum beats and Veracruz regional folk style Son jarocho. 

The first two performances will be held near adobe monuments constructed by Torres and the third performance will be held in a location that is important to the performers. Torres created adobe brick monuments that serve as sites of mediation and celebration of Mesoamerican natural spirituality. Two performances will be within the monuments at El Paseo Community Garden in Chicago on October 1st and Franconia Sculpture Park in Minneapolis on September 24th. The third performance will occur in Malinalli Garden on October 2nd, in Chicago’s neighborhood of Little Village. Malinalli Garden has been renovated over the last four year by The Maz Maiz Collective, The VPC and other community organizations. Malinalli Garden is a meeting place for Mitotiliztli Mesoamérican Traditional dance group. 

Iyapokatzin was made with the support of the Chicago DanceMakers Forum, Lab Artist Program. Mentorship given by Gabriela Mendoza-Garcia and Yanira Castro. 

*This work will employ aroma and smoke as main characters. Please be aware if you have allergies, you may want to wear a mask or sit farther from the stage. 

1 Bernd Brabecc de Mori, “Singing White Smoke” in The Master Plant (Italics), 100-101. City: 

My rolled-up tobacco 

Lights it up from the inside. 

[It lights up] your beautiful word-in-the-song

Which is expanded by the rolled-up tobacco, 

By my rolled-up tobacco 

The interior essence of your body 

I will make soft [like velvet],

So that it may receive the good luck. 

This I will do for you….

•  Rosa Valera, a Shipibo singer’s tobacco healer chant

Iyapokatzin; the venerable tobacco smoke is a choreographic work that honors the history of tobacco from a Mexican perspective through Marcela Torres’ years of research and devotion to tobacco as a deity. Iyapokatzin is a Nawatl word and translates to “venerable tobacco smoke”.

Torres began their relationship with tobacco through smoking cigars; a mouthful of earthen smoke became an immersive caretaker. A ventilator of ancestral flavors uniting their contemporary breath and realities with those from the past.  The phenomenon of smoking land and its history sparked curiosity about tobacco’s legacy, spirituality and ceremonial usages. Iyapokatzin looks at the narrative of tobacco to tell parallel stories of colonization and diaspora felt by the botanical world and contemporary Latinx folx. It is a ceremony that defines a new queer embodiment and marks new futures with our ancestral planty deities. With their collaborators, Torres uses their queer Mexican experience to mutate, improvise traditional dance forms and create moments of spiritual exaltation with their ancestors and spiritual guides. The contemporary relationship between Torres and cigars creates another generational bond with tobacco as an ancestor, healer and messenger. Iyapokatzin is the building of a ceremony, the legacy of the tobacco plant is also a history of people. 

Iyapokatzin is made in collaboration with Izayo Mazehualli. Mazehualli is an instructor of the Azteka-Chichimeka dance tradition and Nahua martial arts. He has spent over a decade learning rituals through stories, research, music-making and dance. His movement practice is a spiritual offering and philosophical commitment to the Teteoh, deities of the Mesoamerican pantheon. Mazehualli is an artist who makes his wealth of knowledge accessible by conducting ceremonies, leading dance groups, teaching youth and making ancestral vegan foods. Torres, as student of Mazehualli, was given dances that speak to Torres’s ancestral sojourner, allowing for further closeness to their tobacco, fire deity.

Together Torres, Mazehualli offer Iyapokatzin, with an open rite to the Azteka deity Tezcatlipoca through a celebration of fire to honor the tobacco messenger. Torres employs Folklórico movement to narrate the history of rolling tobacco within historical factories in Veracruz, MX. Torres plays with live smoke and blends traditional steps with their intuitive embodied dance, a mixture of house dance, industrial music desires and martial arts reactionary movements. Sections of this ritual are made in collaboration with LA Spacer, who has created a companion musical score for the performance that includes traditional Azteka-Chichimeka drum beats and Veracruz regional folk style Son jarocho. 

The first two performances will be held near adobe monuments constructed by Torres and the third performance will be held in a location that is important to the performers. Torres created adobe brick monuments that serve as sites of mediation and celebration of Mesoamerican natural spirituality. Two performances will be within the monuments at El Paseo Community Garden in Chicago on October 1st and Franconia Sculpture Park in Minneapolis on September 24th. The third performance will occur in Malinalli Garden on October 2nd, in Chicago’s neighborhood of Little Village. Malinalli Garden has been renovated over the last four year by The Maz Maiz Collective, The VPC and other community organizations. Malinalli Garden is a meeting place for Mitotiliztli Mesoamérican Traditional dance group. 

Iyapokatzin was made with the support of the Chicago DanceMakers Forum, Lab Artist Program. Mentorship given by Gabriela Mendoza-Garcia and Yanira Castro. 

*This work will employ aroma and smoke as main characters. Please be aware if you have allergies, you may want to wear a mask or sit farther from the stage. 

1 Bernd Brabecc de Mori, “Singing White Smoke” in The Master Plant (Italics), 100-101. City: 

Join artist Marcela Torres for a performance of Fire Drilling.

About this event

In conjunction with LatinXAmerican, Marcela Torres performs world-in-the-song as part of Fire Drilling, an ongoing performance project that explores tobacco’s relationship to Latinidad and how western ideologies of capitalism transformed the resource of enlightenment into enslavement, displacement, illness, and diaspora. world-in-the-song focuses on original preparations of the master plant, centered on Indigenous cosmologies through tobacco pastes, snuff, and juices.

Celebrate queerness, disability, and bodies of all kinds inspired by Christina Quarles with Mikey Anderson, Lizz Ortiz, and more.

Marcela Torres will present their second project in a series of three for this years Family Day programming.

Performances | RØDE House

April 14, 2020 7pm

Join us for an evening with Chicago based performance artist Marcela Torres as part of our next iteration of the INVERSE lab series. An alum of INVERSE (NWA 2016), Marcela Torres brings into action performance, objects, workshops, and sound installation that investigates the interpellation of our diaspora.

Why is that grass greener?

Dig into environmental and climate justice inspired by Water After All with Tonika Johnson, Free Street Theater, and more.

Agentic Mode is a 45-minute movement performance that employs audial soundscapes, literature and oral history. Agentic Mode deconstructs the technical form and logic of Muay Thai (martial art), self-defense and historical wars as a model to contemplate the mental space of fear that creates outputs of violence. This investigation combines the multifaceted nature of violence both as a socioeconomic structure forcing Black and Brown neighborhoods to compete for resources, as well as the influence of historical wars on American culture. Agentic Mode is presented by the Utah Division of Arts & Museums in conjunction with the Rio Gallery exhibition Women to the Front.

Free event. No tickets required.