Cuerpos de agua y Rituales Ancestrales

“We are cloud people, we are bodies of water. We honor our gods – gods of water, gods of the Nahua cosmovision. We are children of our planet Earth, we honor the water that inhabits it. Mother of the seas and lakes: Chalchiuhtlicue, father of rain and lightning: Tlaloc. Through our bodies flow their rivers, their lakes, their oceans, their clouds and their rains. It is no coincidence. Our bodies are made of water.”

Gabriela Ortiz, GOOC 2025

Cuerpos de Agua & Rituales Ancestrales is an interdisciplinary, site-responsive performance that brings together dance, live music, and ritual gesture to explore the deep connections between body, memory, and territory. Inspired by the poetic Nahua cosmovision and aquatic landscapes, the piece reflects on water as both a sacred element and a social connector across cultures and geographies.

The work is conceived to be performed in nature-oriented public spaces, especially near bodies of water such as lakes, rivers, fountains, or wetlands. These environments enhance the immersive, sensorial experience of the performance and mirror the central themes of transformation, flow, and reflection.

Performed by four dancers and one live musician, the piece evokes water in its many forms—river, rain, ocean, mist—while drawing from ancestral traditions to create a contemporary ritual. Movement and sound intertwine to invite a collective act of remembrance, grounding, and reconnection with the Earth. Through this ritualized performance, the audience is invited into a space of reflection—on migration, belonging, and the healing potential of ancestral practices in urban life.Cuerpos de Agua & Rituales Ancestrales is not just a performance, but a shared moment of presence—one that opens a dialogue between the human body, natural elements, and cultural memory.

Gabriela Ortiz. Director, Performance Artist and Theater Pedagogue. Creative visionary and project leader whose work connects performative narratives with biographical theater, visual media, and decolonial perspectives. As director of interdisciplinary theater projects such as “Buinsa” and solo performances like “Olvidé”, she develops innovative formats that merge bodywork with critical social narratives. With her international training in acting and theater pedagogy, she directs and performs in productions that promote social participation and creative empowerment. As a project manager and financial officer for cultural associations, she combines artistic integrity with economic competence. Gabriela Ortiz embodies a unique synthesis of artistic innovation and professional project management in the European-Latin American theater scene.

Areli Moran is a Mexican LGBTQ+ artist based in Berlin, Germany. Her work presents visually powerful perspectives on current feminist and political topics through deep autobiographical excavation. Her work have been presented in Mexico, Canada, Berlin, Denmark and Spain where she also developed diverse artistic collaborations.
Her connections with Mexico continues as artistic director of multidisciplinar studio Espacio Expectante that she founded in 2017 and Festival Artes Vivas in 2022.
Since her arrival in Berlin Areli has been supported on different occasions by the Federal and State founding bodies of Germany and premiered her first German production at Tanztage in Sophiensaele Berlin, 2019.