I arrive at the performance space—a large ballroom that the university makes out to be a suitable stage for performances because it won’t relinquish any of the actual theaters on campus for lowly student-initiated shows—right on time. Early by Chilean standards. A side door is opened by chance as I walk up, so I manage to sneak by the line I now see coils out the other side of the building. Spot a friend and sidle up to join her place in waiting. We barely make it in as event staff add extra seats and begin to turn away the less entitled.

This is my third or fourth year coming to the Latinx dance group’s annual spring show. Many of the performers are friends or acquaintances. I’ve considered auditioning in the past and have attended a number of their one-off dance workshops at the gym. These nights are always fun, raunchy, exciting, proud. Whatever the group may lack in coordination, consistency or technical subtlety, they always make up for with the most enthusiasm and sexiness possible. I love it.

This year is their 25th anniversary and they are celebrating with a free show—hence, in part, the line out the door—that is more well planned and executed than any before. It opens bombastically with salsa, all flare and flashing lights. Psychedelic cumbia and latin trap, reggaeton and Mexican folclórico grace the stage in short dresses and cute workout clothes, massive colorful skirts and flowing ghost costumes. We yell and cheer, whistle and clap. Everyone is in awe and heat.

The penultimate number is a medley of past dances, an homage and send off to the performers from my class, who form a particularly large contingent of the troupe. You can really tell how close they all are, my companion says. It’s sweet and we feel good. But as the red velvet curtains close I grow apprehensive. Surreptitiously check my phone under my seat, prepare the camera to record. A close friend, who is also from Chile, texted me last night:

• Bitch
  
  
• Have you gone to the latinx dance show
  
  
• They did part of “and it wasn’t my fault” in the performance and I thought it was horrible
  

Two of the older company members, one a good friend, come out from between the curtains to thank everyone who has made the night possible, ask for donations a final time and introduce the last piece. The last year in Latin America saw a variety of uprisings for different causes, she says. Many of us have been personally affected by these struggles. We wanted to pay homage to the movements of liberation across the continent with this performance.

I want to believe a group like this, with mass appeal to a radical mix of people, dancing across nations, genres and styles, can create moving and effective political art. I want to believe in a pop revolution. I want to believe in a revolution that is sexy, fun, pan-American. But something feels off. I’m on an elite college campus in the Northeast surrounded by students who are feminists, anarchists, marxists, and going to work for Goldman Sachs, or Google, or a corporate 501(c)(3), or, hell, already published authors before they can legally drink. The common denominator is we’re all at this institution, following the traditional educational path, graduating with varying levels of debt and varyingly, but consistently, rosy prospects.

And then up on stage a group of dancers begin to yell the new anthem of Chilean feminist resistance, “Un Violador en tu Camino” (A Rapist in Your Path):

Y la culpa no era mía ni dónde estaba ni cómo vestía

(And it wasn’t my fault nor where I was nor how I dressed)

Y la culpa no era mía ni dónde estaba ni cómo vestía

(And it wasn’t my fault nor where I was nor how I dressed)

Y la culpa no era mía ni dónde estaba ni cómo vestía

(And it wasn’t my fault nor where I was nor how I dressed)

Y la culpa no era mía ni dónde estaba ni cómo vestía

(And it wasn’t my fault nor where I was nor how I dressed)

¡El violador eras tú!

(The rapist was you!)

And on cue, the lights change dramatically for emphasis. And in 20 seconds it's over. And the performance moves on to capoeira, a Brazilian movement practice created by enslaved Africans to preserve their forms of martial arts disguised as dance. I love capoeira, but I am still with Las Tesis, the Chilean feminist performance collective that created “Un Violador en tu Camino,” which goes uncited in the night’s program. A few people in the audience cheered or yelled during the incendiary Spanish chant. Though adoption around the world of this performance piece has proven its versatility and power in every context possible—beside the Arc de Triomphe, in the Turkish congress, outside of Harvey Weinstein’s trial, at the stadium in downtown Santiago where political prisoners were tortured and killed during the dictatorship—I don’t think it was meant to be put up on a stage and watched. It was meant to spread, just like this, but out to include the audience as well, to become radical, participatory theatre. I wanted to jump up and yell along, do the dance I’ve watched on my feed a thousand times and memorized all the words to, I wanted to confront the boy who kissed me at the grimy co-op party my freshman year when I didn’t want it, I wanted to face a cop and tell him “the oppressive state is a macho rapist,” I wanted to pick up a rock and throw it at the armored cars that I’ve seen take over the streets of my home, I wanted my eyes to sting from tear gas, I wanted to be scared because I was doing something right, challenging the powers, pointing at the rapists, fighting for my beliefs.

Instead, I sat comfortably in a fold-out chair and watched similarly piece-meal tributes to the protests in Puerto Rico and elsewhere. Pre-recorded voices of the dancers recited canonical revolutionary slogans and what I took to be some of their own feelings about resistance intermingled with resistance songs from across the continent. I sat comfortably with the inevitable tears coming to my eyes as Calle 13’s beautiful, essentialist, overused transnational ode “Latinoamérica” rang out and my classmates danced, pumping fists in the air and covering their mouths in perfect hip-hop coordination. I sat comfortably as they all assembled across the stage waving flags of countries that have detained, disappeared and destroyed millions of lives for resisting in ways far less perfect, spectacular and sexy than this. I stood up and clapped and expressed my discomfort to friends in middling terms so as to not ruin their experience of authentic Latinx rebellion.

I wasn’t angry with the performers or choreographers or my friends. I was just angry at the fact that I’m here at all, participating in an elite institution of education instead of fighting against the system I’ve studied and purported to resist since I got involved with protests in high school. I was angry to have been teased with revolution and community up on stage without any outlet, any possibility of release. I’ll go back to my class about Modern Latin American history, where I’m learning how we got to this transnationally fucked-up state, step-by-racist-capitalist-step. In the library, where I’m supposed to be brainstorming an essay “that explains how race shaped 19th-century politics of nationalism in two of these countries,” I tell my friend how I’m feeling and we conclude that perhaps writing is the closest I’ll get to release. So here I am. But like the film I made about the Chilean protests in October when they started, my creative expressions are mere redirection, repurposed containment of that energy. I sit comfortably alone making art that I will submit to classes for credit. And up on stage, I see a promise of communal anger and catharsis that I simply can’t have down here in the audience, where I sit and I sit, uncomfortable.