Irvin Manuel Gonzalez (he/him/él) is an artivist, scholar, community organizer, and teacher. He currently works as an Assistant Professor at Florida State University. Gonzalez’s scholarship analyzes the constructs of brownness, queerness, and mexicanidad(es) within social dancing, looking at how immigrant, queer, and working-class dancers navigate trans/national politics through affective connections and creativity. As a dance artist, Gonzalez grounds his art approaches, strategies, and constructions in rasquachismo, a low-brow Chicanx methodology, engaging the brown, working class aesthetics and sensibilities he grew up with to redefine the intended use-value of materials, connections, and being. He also interweaves the practices of resistance found in cumbia, quebradita, and other Latinx social dance forms to build movement that highlights brown joy as a form of social justice. Gonzalez is a founding member of Primera Generación Dance Collective (PGDC) and a board member for Show Box Los Angeles (SBLA). In 2021, his collective, PGDC, received the National Endowment for the Arts Grant to produce “Chale Vale!” a dance piece used to highlight the history of Pachuco/a/x in Los Angeles, CA.