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Home arrow Entertainment Reviews arrow Coyolxauhqui ReMembers, The Latina Dance Project
Coyolxauhqui ReMembers, The Latina Dance Project PDF Print E-mail

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Written by Jennifer Noyer   
last updated Wednesday, February 28, 2007, at 10:12:45
The Latina Dance Project, made up of nationally known dancer/choreographers Licia Perea, Eluza Santos, Juanita Suarez and Eva Tessler, was formed in 2002 to present a new Latina voice in contemporary dance-theatre. Their new Coyolxauhqui ReMembers premiered Friday evening at the Hispanic Cultural Center's Roy E. Disney Center for the Arts. The artists came together from California, New York, North Carolina and Arizona in this collaboration, which was directed by Jose Garcia Davis.

 

Four separate stories make up the dramatic concept based on the Aztec myth of Coyolxauhqui, daughter of the earth goddess. She is destroyed and dismembered by the warrior god, her brother, who casts her body parts into the heavens, which become the phases of the moon. Each story tells of violence or oppression against women, especially Latina women.

A stunning projected video, also by Garcia Davis, and Christina Cardenasís inspired Coyolxauhqui artwork, provided effective visual motifs for movement design. An original musical score by William Campbell heightened the emotive power and provided a framework for rather short dance sequences.

This was strongly physical theatre performed by gifted professionals with imagination and wit. For greater dramatic and emotive effect, however, it needed to be presented in a smaller, more intimate space. The stage here was a bit overwhelming for four dancer-actresses.

The first story, New Moon Over Juarez, conceived by Tessler and based on text by Victor Hugo Rascon Banda, effectively described a young maquiladora (factory) worker mutilated and killed in Ciudad Juarez, where more than 300 women have been murdered in ten years. She begs her sister, an immigrant in the U.S., to come for her remains. The last image is of her body suspended from a circular swing, its shape in space presaging the entire dramaís theme image on the moon of Cardenasís Coyolxauhqui

The second story, Invocada, conceived by Santos, was primarily a monologue by her character as a Brazilian woman invoking the other women on stage to have courage and stand up for themselves. Each woman tells of her own humiliations.

The third story, Sacrifice, by Suarez, was really a farce in the midst of traumatic drama, similar to the Shakespearian device of the Fool who breaks the mood, and at the same time utters judgments on the other characters in the play. Here an immigrant girl re-assembles herself like a grossly exaggerated Barbie doll, urged on by two statuesque blond bimbos who stuff her breasts with balloons, and provide a wild, blond, big-hair wig. Relying on pantomime, this went on far too long and made its statement in the first several minutes.

The last story, full of the hissing breaths of ancient Aztec gods, presented the myth of the moon goddess. Titled Dismembered Moon, Perea conceived the movement and mood of the piece, demonstrating her interest in and gift for utilizing symbolic props with movement. Perea, a native of Albuquerque, danced the part of Coyolxauhqui as a girl caught up in visions from the stars about the evil growing in her motherís womb. The mother-goddess sings the text in almost operatic style so that the screams of pain and anguish work musically as well as dramatically. The birth and attempted murder were handled smoothly, and even elegantly as hands became knives, and an embrace became a death hold. The war god appeared from under his mother full grown, dressed as an urban chola, and attacked his sister while twirling on the circular swing at stage left. When Coyolxauhqui died, she hung from the swing in the same angular pose as Cardenasís dismembered moon disc figure that was projected on the screen behind the dancers.

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About Reviewers 

D.S. Crafts (Website)

Composer Daniel Steven Crafts came to New Mexico from San Francisco where he had hosted a classical music radio program on KPFA. His first commission from opera star Jerry Hadley, "The Song & the Slogan" based on texts by Carl Sandburg, was made into a TV program for the PBS network and aired nationally in 2004 and won an Emmy for Best Music.

His latest opera La Llorona is a collaboration with novelist Rudolfo Anaya based on his play "The Season of La Llorona."

Mr. Crafts is currently working on another commission from Jerry Hadley for a piece about the American Southwest which includes texts by Rudolfo Anaya and V.B. Price.

Two CDs of his music, Contemporaries (short, satirical keyboard works) and ARIAS (excerpts from his various operas) have been released on the BACAT label in San Francisco.


David Steinberg

David Steinberg has covered state government, the courts, city and county government in Santa Fe for the Albuquerque Journal.

He's been an arts writer for the past 20 years, and serves as the book editor, for the Journal.

Over the years, he's also acted in plays, sung in choruses and played trumpet.


Jennifer Noyer

Jennifer Noyer has been writing dance reviews for the Albuquerque Journal for 17 years, as well as contributing articles for Dance Magazine and other art journals. She trained in dance with Hanya Holm in New York City and Colorado Springs, and studied several dance techniques at the graduate level at the University of Michigan. After teaching dance at Wayne State University she entered and completed a Masters Degree in Humanities there.

In New Mexico Ms. Noyer has taught, directed, and choreographed contemporary dance for several years. Her writing on dance includes a monograph accompanying the video of choreographer Bill Evens’ ballet “The Legacy.” An overview of Evans’s world wide career, it was written and published during his tenure at the University of New Mexico.

Ms. Noyer’s studies in the humanities, and her studio dance work influence her approach to dance as an integrative art form in the United States.


Barry Gaines

Barry Gaines has taught Shakespeare in the University of New Mexico English Department for over twenty-five years and has received two outstanding teaching awards.

He has written theater reviews for the Journal since 2000. He has attended theater all over the world including Shakespeare productions in Russia, South Africa, Denmark, and Poland. He has also served as literary advisor for two professional theater companies and written performance reviews for Shakespeare Quarterly.

Gaines has taken two years of acting with Paul Ford and appeared in small parts in three plays at the Albuquerque Little Theater. He believes that he is probably a better reviewer than actor.


Joanne Sheehy Hoover

Joanne Sheehy Hoover, music critic emeritus of the Albuquerque Journal, has written for NPR, PBS, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Symphony, among others.

She has also been a music lecturer for the Smithsonian Associates and a music critic and arts writer for The Washington Post. She was director of the Levine School of Music, one of the country’s largest community music schools, in Washington, D. C. 1980-1993.

She and her husband moved to Corrales, New Mexico in July 1993. Also a poet, her fifth collection, “Einstein in New Mexico,” was published in 2002.


Marissa Greenberg

Marissa Greenberg is a member of the faculty of the University of New Mexico English Department, where she teaches Shakespeare and early English literature. A prior guest reviewer for the Albuquerque Journal, Greenberg will be reviewing theater while Barry Gaines is out of town. She also composed and edited the program notes for last year’s Albuquerque Shakespeare Festival and has written performance reviews for Shakespeare Bulletin.

A graduate of Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, Greenberg has been performing and studying drama for most of her life. She is thrilled to have this opportunity to review for the Journal.

 

 


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