Watch BAGGAGE: A Dance Film By Choreographer Jay Carlon @ Los Angeles' Historic Union Station

BAGGAGE is a theatrical dance work for film by acclaimed dancer and choreographer Jay Carlon with a live-score and sound design by musician Alex Wand. Developed on site in Union Station’s historic Ticketing Hall during a two-week residency by Carlon and Wand—the work celebrates origin stories and embodies the many histories of arrivals and departures at the station and in our lives. It is a personal family narrative of migration told in three chapters unpacked through music, dance, and memory inside the landmark historic space that has served as a gateway to the many individual and collective California arrival stories over the past eight decades.

Opening with the Phillipine proverb “A person who does not remember where they came from will never reach their destination” in Tagalog to provoke the question “How did you get here?”,  Carlon channels the stories of the space through his personal family story. The film concludes with an emotional and physical release as Carlon lets go of family traumas handed down from previous generations. 


The Grandeur Of His Epic: Read Our Interview With Choreographer Jay Carlon

Defining a culture that comprises 7100 islands, centuries of colonization, and an overwhelming desire to assimilate is profound and Sisyphean. Unlike a migration that takes place over land, the ocean seems to wash away all evidence of the traveled path. The historical narrative that has framed Filipino-American immigration is fraught with this eternal question of identity and belonging. Being part Filipino myself, I learned very little about my grandmother’s life story while she was alive. It wasn’t until after she passed away and my grandfather published her memoirs that I learned just how harrowing her journey had been.

After attending the world premiere of FLEX, a dance theater piece that explores primarily the story of choreographer, Jay Carlon’s father and his immigration from the Philippines to the States, I realized that the erasure of these stories is rather commonplace. Click here to read more.