COMEXUS Visiting Chair Brings Dance from Mexico to the Forty Acres

A dance concert staged this spring by the College of Fine Arts at The University of Texas at Austin features the work of Raúl Tamez Carrillo, UT Austin’s 2025 Fulbright-García Robles Visiting Chair.  

The evening-length performance, titled EQUINOX, heralds the return of renowned dance company Dance Repertory Theatre, presenting a series of new works by choreographers and artists from Austin, the United States and around the globe. Showings run March 5-9 at the B. Iden Payne Theatre.  

Tamez teaches and creates danceworks as a professor at Anáhuac University of Mexico and adjunct professor at Universidad de las Américas-Puebla. He is also the director of the Mexican dance company La Infinita Compañía.  

Under the Fulbright-COMEXUS partnership that supports Tamez’s work on the Forty Acres, distinguished scholars from Mexico spend a semester in residence on the UT Austin campus, teaching, conducting research, creating or recreating artistic works and networking with the university community.  

Hosted by the Department of Theatre and Dance, Tamez’s semester-long project addresses Martha Graham's choreography and its relation to Mexico, creating a choreographic response to several works created by “the mother of modern dance.”  

His piece for the concert, fittingly titled “Motherless Child,” explores aspects of women's communal and individual experiences of marginalization and migration due to war or persecution. The dance will be performed by Theatre and Dance students with whom Tamez has worked during the spring semester. 

The winner of multiple awards for performance and choreography in the U.S. and Mexico, Tamez has danced with companies in Europe and Mexico and presented choreographic work in Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Cuba, Japan, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United States.  

UT Austin and the United States-Mexico Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange (COMEXUS) partnered in 2022 to create the position of Fulbright-García Robles Visiting Chair on the Forty Acres. In addition to supporting the work of distinguished Mexican scholars, the residency creates opportunities for cultural exchange and dissemination of research, strengthening academic relations between the U.S. and Mexico.  

To learn more about the Fulbright-García Robles Visiting Chair residency, visit the Texas Global website. For details and ticket information about EQUINOX, visit the Theatre and Dance website.