Angel Ramirez’s Vamos a bailar? at Atlas by Luisa Lynch

Dance as Resistance & Protest: “Vamos a bailar?” con Angel Ramirez

Angel Ramirez’s Vamos a bailar

Atlas Arts Lab

June 13th, 2026. 4pm

Written by Luisa Lynch

A dancer in the spotlight, suspending, pushing, moving with control that cuts through space with intention as cloudy as grief yet as clear as glimmering water.

An amorphous group of bodies becoming liquid, fluidly melting into each other like beads of sweat dripping down your back when dancing to your favorite song under club lights.

A club scene holding space for sub groups that anyone who has ever been involved in queer nightlife knows well: friends, lovers, and that older lesbian aunt who just wants to feel herself.

As an artist and mover, Angel Ramirez invites you to let your guard down and dance as a way of fighting back when life – and the world at large – wants to bring you down. If that was doubted or unknown before, Angel made it clear in his most recent evening-length work, Vamos a bailar?  

“I was down bad with depression and anxiety,” Angel shared about his mental health last summer when ICE raids first started gripping the DMV area with unrest. He comes from an immigrant background and has been trying to find himself amidst cross cultural differences and various forms of violence for as long as he can remember. One night, as he was pregaming with his friends to hit the clubs in DC, he discovered his car got broken into and suffered financial and material losses. But after understandably crashing out, he decided he would still be going out and letting loose. A “fuck it” moment, if you will.

“I don’t go out a lot so this was the best night ever,” Angel told me when recounting the evening. “I now see the importance of friendship, community, and also shaking fucking ass!”

Angel feels that the Trump administration is trying to keep vulnerable communities inside by stoking fear into bodies and minds – a very real trauma response to the body when experiencing rising fascism. And yet, while it’s important that we go out and protest if we’re able, it’s also important that we release that stress with people who make us feel safe. That’s what made Angel realize he had to create art with his community about this experience.

Sixteen dancers took the stage on June 13th at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street in Washington, D.C. Among those dancers was Angel himself, who was a 2026 cohort member of the Atlas Arts Lab, “a program of the Atlas Performing Arts Center that provides a platform for individual artists to develop new work and to serve the community through engagement initiatives that encourage civic dialogue and community cohesion.” It couldn’t be more clear that Angel and his creation of Vamos a bailar? which means “Let’s dance?” in Spanish, fit into this program. 

I was supposed to be the seventeenth dancer in the piece, but last-minute yet important family travel took me across oceans, so I lived vicariously through what was shared of the rehearsal process online. Angel and I had been in communication about how I could still be involved, as we have been good friends for the last couple of years and perform in each other’s work often. My viewing of Vamos a bailar? was on the TV of a house I dogsit for, streamed from my laptop, but the piece itself was so rich that the dancers, in their cuntiest outfits under brightly colored lights, popped out of the screen at me. As a college graduate during the height of COVID-19, I have a history of viewing dance performances through a screen. There is a difference between creating a performance for the camera vs a live audience, and they don’t usually read in the same way. While I wish I had seen the show live to also experience the excitement of the audience in response to performers, I felt the same pull to the stage as a viewer to make sure I didn’t miss any single detail, despite a screen being the vessel for witnessing. When the technical elements and choreography are as engaging as they are in Angel’s work, streaming performance is fair game for review. 

What often sticks out to me of Angel’s work is his use of small groups of dancers – specifically soloists. This makes sense, considering his work almost always comes from his own personal experience. In the beginning of the piece, there was a lot of group isolation from a specific soloist that reminded me of the way queer people are often othered from spaces, creating a sense of loneliness that pushes self acceptance so far down that it has to come out somehow. Angel’s choreography showed this with a movement quality that was hesitant yet exploratory through nonstop athletic motion: push, roll, suspend, lift, run, jump, fall. Each dancer was in regular dance warmup clothes such as sweatpants, tank tops, flannels and socks, which came as a surprise to me knowing ahead of time that the piece was going to depict queer nightlife. When Angel and I sat down to discuss his rehearsal process and inspiration, all of the pieces fell into place.

“The first part of the piece is the why — the creation of friendship,” Angel expressed when speaking of community building. “We’re living by ourselves while there’s also rivalry in the dance community, and that pushes each other away.” It’s true, in any dance scene, there is bound to be competition. Angel asks an important question of reprioritizing where we put our energy as artists in an intense time of political turmoil. I learned later that the in-person performance started with a video projected onto the stage with news headlines and ICE arrests, and a single dancer, Kelsey Rohr watching it on the floor. Throughout the evening, she symbolized a self evolution that progresses from isolation and fear to allowing oneself to open up and let go. That opening up happened in a depiction of an underground nightclub experience. 

Sunglasses, hair whips, mini skirts, folding fans. Disco ball, DJ booth, brat green, Donna Summer. I was living watching the second half of this show, and I wasn’t even there. It felt like the “Guess” performance by Charli xcx from the Grammys if those models could actually dance. Angel told me he took a lot of inspiration from her Boiler Room set. The DJ set was a focal point of the second half of the work. Dancers specifically faced toward the DJ despite their backs being to the audience, with break out moments happening intermittently. Angel spoke about how underground clubs are historically where queer folks and BIPOC can exist safely, and the layers of privilege that come with even having access to those spaces in the city he lives in. 

“It’s a privilege to look thotty and show ass, in some parts of the world you can’t,” Angel pointed out. And he’s right — despite the political turmoil DC has faced ever since Trump has taken office for a second term, the queer community here has fought back harder than ever, taking full autonomy of ourselves, our bodies, how we live our lives and what we wear. 

The show ended with Angel holding up a disco ball to the sky, with lights of the rainbow shining onto the stage. An hour of absolute nonstop movement leading up to a powerful moment of unity through dance. And this is how Angel walks through life —  holding community classes around the DMV area, creating work for the next performance opportunity, and dancing in the work of fellow DC dance artists. Ultimately, always working with people and serving his community. A complete difference from what the administration who is trying to keep him inside is doing. And yet, he goes out, shakes ass, and creates community anyway. 

Luisa Lynch (she/they) (@luisalynch) is a queer, mixed-race dance artist and educator based in Washington, D.C. In her work, practice, and life, Luisa reimagines dance through reclamation of the body, and aims to highlight intersectionalities of all identities and selves! You can read more about Luisa on our STAFF page!