by Daniel Fetecua Soto
Published February 2026
(Edited March 1, 2026)

This document is intended to embrace multilingual cultures, incorporating the languages that I speak and intended to speak. It is not intended to be a formal English language document.

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I am sharing a story on how I have embarked into the (re)membering of this solo Fansié Sinak Chipwany-We Are Still Here, a dance that is trying to reconstruct the cultural fabric torn apart by the colonization of Colombia, South America, where the language and practices of Indigenous Muisca peoples were long prohibited. 

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It all begins going back, one more time, this time with my dance partner and beloved Blakeley Angelle to the Laguna de Guatavita a sacred lagoon of the Muisca people. It is the womb of Mother Earth where the new Cacique would be placed in a raft full of ofrendas from the community, mostly made out of pure gold. The Cacique would also  be covered with gold powder all over his body. The action of submerging himself into the lagoon would be known as the beginning of a new cycle and the gold would fall to the bottom of the lagoon.

While we were walking up to the lagoon, our guide began to share some words in Muisca, I had never heard anyone share so much information about the language. I grew up in Bogotá in a place called Fontibón. The normal thing to hear was that “they [Muisca] all disappeared”, or los mataron a todos, this phrase has always been very weird to me. First, because my family talked about our last name Fetecua being  Muisca, and there are other Indigenous communities alive in Colombia not far from  Bogotá. Going back to our visit to this incredible lagoon, listening to our guide, I was totally surprised and intrigued to know why she knew so much about the language. So,  at the end of our visit I asked about it, she shared that the language has been reconstructed over the last 50 years, or so, and that there were Muisca language  courses and also Muisca communities……… what? I couldn’t believe what she was saying. I realized that that phrase “they all disappeared”, los mataron a todos had really planted some fake roots in me and that it was time to change that and to discover some new information that actually has always been there. 

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And so, we began our Muisca class, yes “we”! Blakeley who was learning Spanish, launched herself into a Muisca course in Spanish! Our professor Facundo Saravia, born in Argentina has been a student of the language with María Stella González and worked along with Nicholas Ostler into the approximation to the language. We also took class with professor Yátaro Cesar Sánchez León founder of Pedagogías Ancestrales. We took three full courses on Zoom and got quite a lot of information and learning not only of the language but also the Muisca culture. Some of the information that was shared I had already known about. For example about el Cacique Intiva or (Yntyva in Muisca),  that was the Cacique of Fontibón where I grew up and my family had mentioned his name to me many times. This information is registered in the manuscripts from the XVI and XVII centuries by the first encounters with the Spanish representatives of “El  Nuevo Reino de Granada”.  

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Spring of 2023 came and during a school break we decided to visit our family in Bogotá with my kids. As part of the trip we decide to visit our Professor Facundo in the beautiful town of Raquira on his Finca Agroecológica called Uba We in the state of  Boyaca, which is Muisca land. Facundo lives with his wife and two wonderful kids. Once we arrived my kids and their kids disappeared into the mountains. Facundo has a proper Bohio Ceremonial where we sat around the fire at night and got in contact with Hoska Weshika-Abuelo Tabaco. Facundo is also a founder and member of a Folk Metal band called Ubasuka, that had released an album all in Muisca language… boom! To my surprise there it was, the piece that I was missing. The first day of the Muisca course I had a call, something that began to set some true roots in me and that it was feeding slowly, strong and there it was when I heard their album Zhaitania-El Origen. The lyrics in Muisca were a call to the origin. I understood that I needed it to make a dance, this time not as I had done before with a mentality of making a “new” choreography or a contemporary work but rather, trying to open myself to receive information. I was tuning myself with the path I was walking, the river I was navigating, the air I was breathing, the mountains I was seeing and walking, the water I was bathing in, the rivers and with the rain and the sun that was looking at me and in connection with the territory where I currently live, New York City. Suddenly everything began to come together, memories of my childhood, listening to the elders of my family and the food and all the dances I had danced with my aunts and uncles, my mom and father and my relatives. All the invisible threads became visible, traces of irrevocable imprints of the people, of the land. But where to do it? What was going to be the process, this new process? 

Well… let’s go back in time where the seeds were first planted. 

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During the summer of 2007 in Brockport, NY on my second year as a member of the José Limón Dance Company, our artistic director at that time, Carla Maxwell invited Daystar/Rosalie Jones to give us a lecture demonstration of her work. Daystar is a pioneer of Native American modern dance. Her company Daystar: Contemporary Dance-Drama of Indian America now 45 years old has been a starting point for many companies now in the making of indigenous dance. I was in awe with her storytelling, her elegance and magnificent dancing. She performed a Jingle Dress dance for us and shared eye-opening information for me. While we were at Brockport we were reconstructing José Limón’s masterwork “The Unsung” an homage to the great Chiefs of North America. The piece was reconstructed by Clay Taliaferro and besides dancing  the “Pantheon" I was learning “Osceola" one of the eight solos. At the end of the residency we performed for our summer workshop students and Daystar was also in the audience. After the showing, she approached me and asked me if I would dance a piece of hers, WOLF: A Transformation, a master work performed with three masks and full regalia. After two years performing this powerful work she decided to give me the rights to the dance for performance, preservation and promotion. It has been 19 years of learning alongside with Daystar/Rosalie Jones in every performance, every conversation, performing together and traveling together. With this opening I have been getting close to the Indigenous communities of Turtle Island (North America) with her as a Pembina-Chippewa-Cree and with the Shinnecock Nation in Long Island visiting their annual Pow Wow and working in collaborative projects with Shane Weeks a multi-disciplinary artist and cultural bearer. In a Pow Wow that Shane and his community hosted at the Flushing Town Hall in Queens, NY, I saw a staff that called my attention, it was painted black and had a feather on the top assembled with yellow leather, it was so beautiful. When I held it in my hands I had the feeling that it could be part of my dance, the staff had been made by one of Shane’s cousins from the Shinnecock Nation. Daystar was in this gathering as well. 

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Time passed and an invitation came from Pepe Santana in March of 2024 to perform for the second time at the Inti Raimi Festival in New Jersey at the Paterson Great Falls. It is a wonderful festival that showcases Andean Indigenous traditions. This was the moment, I thought, I could perform a first version of the solo as I had already picked-up two songs from Facundo’s album. I needed space to begin the dance but this time I didn’t want to be inside of the walls in a dance studio. So I was waiting to find a place that will speak to me. One day I was in Brooklyn taking my kids to a birthday party, it was a beautiful spring day in April and the sun was shining. I went to the Sunset Park that is on a small hill that overlooks Manhattan. In this park I asked permission to la Pacha-Mama and began the first thread. I felt that the cut made with the sword had broken the cultural fabric of the people, and that this dance was a way to reconstruct the fabric with the pieces that had survived over time and with the information that I had received in the course that reaffirmed the knowledge that I already had. I premiered a first version of the solo called “Mysk” or “people” in Muisca.  

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After sharing so many years with Daystar I consider her my mentor. And so, I shared this first iteration with her and she very graciously shared her wise thoughts with me.  She said: “I think it is an excellent, energetic, heart-felt beginning. The steps in the circular and diagonal paths right away define the dance as Indigenous. In the air turns and the kneeling arabesque acknowledges that you and we must respect the air/Sky and land/Earth”. She also mentioned that the end needed more work where I had incorporated the staff but had not really developed it. Daystar said: “I think perhaps the  Staff should be seen by the audience from the beginning, displayed as a place of honor, rather than placed on the floor, out of sight. If the Staff has a place of ‘honor’, while on display, that identifies it as perhaps a sacred object, or at least an object of respect”. This really guided me to continue developing the piece and walking the path of this reencounter with my ancestors.

An invitation came from Daystar to perform with her company at Ganondagan: Seneca Art and Culture Center in Victor, NY as part of a Indigenous Peoples Celebration the fall of 2024. She asked me to perform her work Wolf: A Transformation and also to perform my new work. I premiered a new iteration adding a new song “Hoska Wesica GrandFather Tobaco” from the same album that helped me develop the third section with the staff, during the process with this new song I felt that I need it to add a rattle from  the Amazons that I had had with me for several years as a symbol of bringing together the South and the North. During the performance a step came to me while I was dancing, it is a traditional step from a Colombian dance called Farotas, a warrior dance, where the man will dress as women to defend their native women from the Spanish Conquistadores. I now incorporate that into the last section of the dance. 

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This was a major performance for me, having in mind that I was performing for the Haudenosaunee community. I also had the challenge of opening the evening. I received enthusiastic applause and many compliments at the end of the night, even a gift from the husband of singer/songwriter Joanne Shenandoah to whom Daystar was honoring her life and artistic accomplishments by making a new choreography to her music for this event. 

The (re)membering cycle of this dance has been a reweaving of the pieces that were cut and yet, survived through time. I continue to work in this dance and some other  elements had come with time, I continue walking forward as an affirmation that "we are  still here.”