Manuel Ricardo Cuellar is associate professor of Latin American and Latinx Studies at The George Washington University. His research primarily engages questions of performance, especially as they concern dance, indigeneity, and Afro-mestizo imaginaries in Mexico, combining ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, and studies of contemporary and classical Nahuatl, Mexico’s most widely spoken and written Indigenous language. For over 30 years, he has been a practitioner of Mexican folklórico dance, as an instructor and performer, and he is currently part of Corazón Folklórico Dance Company in Washington, D.C. Cuellar’s strong background in Mexican traditional dance has led him to explore dance’s role in Mexican national identity, indigeneity, and queerness both in Mexico and the United States. His work has appeared in Performance Research, A Contracorriente, Ethnohistory, and the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies among others. He is the author of Choreographing Mexico: Festive Performances and Dancing Histories of a Nation (UT Press 2022), winner of the 2023 de la Torre Bueno First Book Award by the Dance Studies Association.