Elegía indígena

Abstract

his undergraduate thesis aims to explore and describe the significant connections between my formative experience as the author within the Proyecto Curricular Arte Danzario and the historical memory of the territory of Duitama, Boyacá, Colombia, through the legendary figure of the Cacique Tundama. Based on the concept of esthesis proposed by Katia Mandoki, this work offers a sensitive reflection on how contemporary young bodies can re-signify, through dance, the resistance, dignity, and indigenous identity of their territory. Mandoki's notion of everyday aesthetics allows for an understanding of the aesthetic as something not limited to formal art, but as embedded in the gestures, habits, and symbols that shape daily life. In this sense, choreographic creation becomes a space where the ancestral and the contemporary intertwine, enabling dancers—through movement—to revive and embody their ancestral memories. This choreographic process is carried out with students from El Dorado Ballet Folclórico, where I serve as a teacher and choreographer. The process integrates creative laboratories as spaces for academic deepening and historical research, including documentary review in the town’s public library. The resulting dance piece seeks not only to revive the memory of Cacique Tundama as a symbol of resistance, but also to generate an aesthetic experience that bridges ancestral tradition and contemporary expression through movement. This project proposes a personal esthesis—that is, a way of knowing through sensitive creation—that affirms artistic practice as a valid form of knowledge production and cultural resistance.