We learned about the dance troupe, Diavolo, through Steve Connell - a spoken word artist we saw last year in his two-man show, The Word Begins (co-written and performed with Sekou Andrews).
We enjoyed The Word Begins so much, that we saw it twice, and we were sold on any future projects Connell and/or Andrews participated in in the future. So we had been waiting for Diavolo's show for months with much anticipation.
It's difficult whenever you build up that much hype for yourself about something: you run the risk of being let down. But Diavolo's performance The Broad Stage far surpassed any expectations we could have had. Going to a Diavolo show is like seeing a stripped down version of Cirque du Soleil: excellent dancers/performers/athletes with no elaborate costumes, props, light, set changes, trapeze, etc. With Diavolo, you get a piece where beautiful movement interacts with an intricate architectural element, combining dance, gymnastics, and in the the case of Transit Space, spoken word.
Trajectoire
The first piece Diavolo opened with was Trajectorie, a piece that first debuted in the 90s. It's obvious why they still do it: not only does it show us tremendous feats of athleticism, but it also conveys a story of struggle. Of teamwork. Of the beauty and difficulty of a journey.
The architectural element in this piece looks like a boat that rocks back and forth. It gets turned 360 degrees, deconstructed and even stopped completely. The dancers perform around it, over it, below it, inside it. The movement is exciting, keeping you at the edge of their seat wondering what they're going to do next or how they can possibly top the previous trick. The piece plays with you, scares you, make you think the dancer might fall of the boat, or get caught below, or won't make their landing.
But the constant movement also renders the moments of silence - of stillness - beautiful and tender.
Transit Space
This piece aims to reflect Los Angeles, echoing Dogtown and its skater culture. To that end, the piece contains more props and moving pieces, such as skateboards with no wheels and a network of wooden and steel slides.
These slides get connected, separated. They become bridges, walls.
The spoken word aspect of it brings forth themes of discovery, journey, belonging, escaping, going home. Through its different voices, both male and female, it reflects the ethnographic diversity of the area and the shared conflicts between people and the sense of community. We see the dancers as lovers, friends, and neighbors, trying to find themselves while also reveling in the moment.
The piece itself moves like the slides, with highs and lows: movements of great intensity evolve into moments of stillness - pausing for reflection.
It's meaningful that both pieces are about journeys, both physical and internal ones, yet they're expressed in very different ways, through a variety of means. It's wonderful to note how much of that expression comes through movement along, how a single hand gesture can carry emotion that we struggle to articulate.
*Reminder: this is not a review of the performances, but my own attempt at writing with the one-word prompt, like Rogue Machine does for this monthly event of awesomeness.
When I hear the word "blood," several gory instances of my youth flash by. Like the time I fell off my high chair and landed on my chin on the kitchen tile, needing stitches. Or the time I fell and cut exactly the same spot while ice skating, needing more stitches. Or the time a kid punctured my skull with two wooden sticks in a bouncy house, ruinining my pink and purple party dress. Or the time I spit coagulated blood after a vessel burst in my inner lip, and I had to tell the foreign exchange student who was staying with me that I was fine. Or the time I learned how to surf in Hawaii, and how the coral cut my knee open, requiring eleven stitches.
No, blood and I aren't strangers. We're more like acquaintances who run into each other at parties and exchange banal pleasantries while we each busy ourselves with our phones or the hors d'oeuvres until someone comes to relieve us from our awkward societal duties.
But when it gets down to "blood" in a more metaphorical sense, I can't help but to think in matters of national identity.
I never really thought about my blood until my sophomore year in college, when a friend came to visit me in Mexico City over winter break. Here's where my background gets a little complicated, so in a nutshell: I was born in Miami, Florida one month early but grew up in Mexico City, where my parents were born and raised. I lived there until I was eighteen and went to college in British Columbia, Canada. I went back to Mexico City every summer until I graduated - point at which my parents were living in the Los Angeles area, so I moved here.
Now back to the story. Over Christmas break, a friend came to visit, and as I was telling him all about Mexican history at the National Palace, he stopped me in the middle of my narrative and asked, "Who's 'we'?"
"What?" I asked.
"Who's 'we'?" he repeated. "You just said, 'We welcomed them.'"
"Oh. 'We' is the Aztecs. 'Them' refers to the Spaniards - Cortez and his crew."
"So you're Aztec?"
"Well, no. Actually, no."
"Where's your family from?"
"Spain and England on my mom's side. Polish and Russian on my dad's."
"Then wouldn't you be 'them'?"
This was the first time I thought about blood in terms of familial lineage - as opposed to a collective cultural history. He was right: technically, my blood brought me closer to 'them,' the conquistadores. But I grew up as Mexican: the history of Mexico, of my country, being my history.
And so began my exploration into a national identity and what that means. When and how do we leave one identity behind and pick up the other?
When I lived in Canada, being Mexican was cool and exotic. Someone would ask me where I was from.
"Mexico City," I'd reply.
"Oh! Mexico!" They'd say enthusiastically. You see, most Canadians I talked to knew more about Mexico than just the beachfront resorts and their reputation for excellent nightlife; many of them had been to archaeological sites and spoke highly of my home country. I was proud to be Mexican in Canada, and I often used that as a way of describing my behavior.
For instance, if I barged into your room - akin to Kramer in Seinfeld - this invasion of your privacy could easily be explained by the lack of personal space issues in a city with 23 million people. You try riding in the metro at arm's length of the next passenger ...
But when I moved to LA, the conversation went something like this:
"Where are you from?"
"Mexico City."
"Oh."
It was a slap in the face. It was a crude awakening to the realization that being Mexican in the United States - and particularly in Los Angeles - meant something different. "Mexican" here is a loaded term that carries a lot of baggage. Immediately people make assumptions about my level of education, my family, how I got here, and what gives me the right to be here.
This one time, I caught one of my friends describing me to one of his friends as his "educated Mexican friend."
And I heard my dad doing something really brilliant whenever he got asked where he was from. "Originally from Mexico," he'd say. Sometimes he'd also responded with, "I moved here from Texas," which is a statement of fact that cleverly avoids the question.
You see, my dad is white. As I mentioned earlier, his parents were born in what is now Ukraine and Poland, and he speaks English with almost no accent. Similarly, I could "pass as white" if I wanted to.
When I first moved here, right out of college, right after Canada, The Land of Tolerance, I thought it was disgusting that my dad would play into this rejection of our national identity. I wanted to live here and be the proud example that Mexican people have a rich history, a rich culture, and can have the same level of education and be just as wordly - or perhaps more so - than your average Joe. But I soon found that introducing myself as Mexican within the first five minutes of a conversation put up a barrier. I was surprised to see how many people won't carry a conversation with you after that. Or how they suddenly hear my accent, when they had no idea I had reason to have one five minutes ago.
Soon enough, I, too, began responding with, "Originally from Mexico." Just last month I actually claimed to be from California while on a Vegas trip with my girlfriends.
And this makes me feel like a traitor.
I think back on this one time when, at a club, a very white, very blonde guy was hitting on me and asked me where I was from. "Mexico," I said. "Are you, like, 100% Mexican?" he asked.
"Really? 100% Mexican? What does that even mean?"
'Cause I guess percentages and fractions mean something here. If you're all American, what makes you different from one another? "Oh, well, I'm half Irish on my mother's side and half Polish, but my dad's family is from Holland."
But how much of that are you really? What makes you Irish or Polish or Dutch? Is it the random holidays your family might still celebrate? Or songs your mom sang to you at night when you were little? Or traditional family dishes that you have at special occasions? Or is that all gone? Is it solely your genetic composition ... and is that enough to claim heritage?
Poor guy ... he had no idea what he'd gotten himself into when he asked that. I bet he wasn't expecting to get a whole dissertation at a club.
I miss the days when I was sure about who I was and what impetus made me me.
'Cause I was never the posted child for Mexico, either. I grew up in a household where my whole family spoke English and Spanish. We all graduated from the same high school - an American high school - with Mexican and American high school diplomas. And I always wanted to study and build a career abroad. I knew that Mexico was going to have very little to offer me - unless I dropped my dad's name at every interview I ever went to.
I used to be in tune with Mexican politics, and I used to be a much more political person. And I feel so out of touch now. Mexican issues don't feel like my issues anymore ... but neither do American issues. I feel wrong, deceitful forming a stance, a strong opinion on what I think is right for either country.
And every time I go back to my home country, to the city I was raised in, I feel further and further removed from it.
All my life, I've started off sentences in one language and ended them in another. I've celebrated Halloween just as much - if not more - as Dia de los Muertos. I grew up in a bilingual, bicultural environment.
So I feel Mexican, and I feel American, but I don't feel Mexican American - at least not in a chicano kind of sense. So I don't really know where that leaves me, or what that means. The intellectual side of me tries to remind me that it's just a label, and that people are far more complex than a single label. But my emotional side has trouble accepting that as a reality. My emotional side wants to belong, wants to wave a flag fervently, and it'd be easy to say that I could just raise two flags, but it feels hypocritical.
So where does that leave me? What do you do when your blood is not enough to define you? How do you create a new definition?
Once a month every month, Rogue Machine Theatre puts on "Rant & Rave," - an event they describe as follows:
We take a group of vocal LA writers, give them a topic and a time limit. It's an evening of cathartic thinking by some of the most dangerous minds in the city.
One of the wonderful things about the selected performers is that not all of them are actors. They are professionals in all sorts of fields and bring different perspectives and approaches to the same topic.
As the host, Ron Bottitta acts as the emcee, introducing the one-word topic to us through an array of well constructed, humorous metaphors and including his own, short personal approach to the topic. Then three or four performers take the stage, one at a time, then there's a short break, and then another three or four performers take their turn in making us laugh, cry, and reflect.
Last night, for instance, was a particularly great night over the following topic: Blood. It's wonderful to see how each performer took it in a different way, some talking about familial bonds (or lack thereof), others talking about gashing wounds, and most talking about both.
Because Rant & Rave is a difficult experience to describe, instead of reflecting on the different performances, I'd going to take it as a writing exercise and write about the one-word topic myself - because what better way to reflect than to make it my own?
My next post will be on last night's topic: Blood.
This entry is going to break from norm and get personal.
Rogue Machine Theatre's Three Views of the Same Object was a cathartic experience that made me bawl. It's a harsh look at aging and how many relationships deteriorate as their bodies do. It's a realistic portrayal of the anger, the helplessness, and the hurt of old age.
Moreover, it's a reflection of what's currently happening to my family.
My grandmother has had cancer since 2007, and she's fought it every step of the way. She's won battles, reclaimed her hair, climbed the Great Wall of China - only to get it back and get ready for Round 2 ... and Round 3.
This will be the last round.
There are very few options available to her at this point, and the treatment she's currently undergoing is harsher than before. The treament is meant only to keep her alive as long as possible, as the cancer isn't going to go away. The chemo this time has made her sick and miserable and angry. It's also taking a toll on the entire family, especially my grandfather, as she is his world.
He sits stubbornly by her side, tending to her when she can't move, holding her hand in his. When she does walk, his hand never lets go of hers. And he's so worried for her that he's keeping her like a princess locked away in a tower, as if she were made of porcelain and could break upon touch.
I'm certain that when I lose her, I will lose them both - that is, if he doesn't go first. At 91, my grandfather is still fit and perfectly healthy, with all his wits about him, but he proclaimed a few months ago when the cancer got angry again that he wasn't going to make it past 92 - whether that was with or without his wife.
I dread visiting them now. Not because I'm scared of seeing her sick, but because the quality of the conversation has become so negative that I'm having difficulty retaining the happy memories of my grandmother. I have to coax her into talking about our travel adventures or our collective family memories to hear something positive.
Old age is ugly. Frustrating. Demanding.
The sickness has infiltrated everyone's lives. My mother lives in limbo, unable to forge a life of her own because she's constantly drawn back to take care of her parents. She's put her life - and her marriage - on hold, waiting in denial for the inevitable.
At one point in the play, one of the character remarks how envious she is of people with Alzheimer's. The already shocking statement becomes more powerful when you've actually experienced what Alzheimer's is. My great-grandmother had it. I remember the typical scene of my family members constantly asking her if she recognized us, if she knew who we were. But I also remember seeing dried up poop wiped in the window curtains, up and down the staircase. I would've never thought of dementia as a blessing.
But when you think about all the people you have loved and lost, all the things you can no longer do, the places you can no longer go ... well, then it starts to make some sense.
As my grandmother turns the page to her last chapter, I begin to assume the role I play in my family - the youthful sunshine that comes into their lives, lights up their days, and lets them live vicariously through my discoveries, my accomplishments, allowing them to forget for a moment how dark everything is now. I cannot break down before them, or else they will all fall like dominoes.
So if I can't cry in real life, I'll cry when I see Three Views again. And again.
This has been the greatest disappointment of the year.
Harsh, I know, but true.
It's hard to leave expectations at the door, especially after seeing wonderful plays at the Getty Villa. Not only is the Villa my favorite place in Los Angeles, but I have also seen wonderful performances there: Agammemnon, Peace, Elektra, and The Trojan Women.
But Helen is an adaptation of Euripides' original that tries to do too much. In its overly ambitious effort to try to do too many things, it leaves excellent critiques and themes on the table.
One of the most wonderful notions of the play is how it imagines an "old" Helen, one who is still beautiful, but whose beauty has waned. This production depicts Helen as a Hollywood starlet, and there was so much potential with that: if your looks are all you have going for you, what happens when you lose them? How does that shape your identity?
This production, however, merely scratches the surface by having many characters make quips about how old she looks and having her do a ridiculous pose whenever someone realizes who she is. Very few of the quips are clever, namely the one where Menelaus mistakes her for Clytemnestra - a comical "blow" exploiting the tension between Helen and her sister, as Clytemnestra was not Zeus' daughter, according to the myth, and therefore "inferior" to Helen and her beauty. Then the joke gets old as the play continues.
There were moments for great political tension - and political tension is, after all, why Euripides was writing in the first place, sick of the Peloponnesian War. But instead of milking these moments for all their worth, the production seems to me more concerned with shoehorning in references to Hollywood moments and personas.
Well, that was funny.
It's nice to get a break from thought-provoking theatre ever so often and just have a laugh. That's what Scooter and I got to do with South Coast Repertory's Absurd Person Singular - a play in three acts, set in the 1970s.
The play is about three couples. Each act takes place during Christmas over a three-year period, during which we watch the socioeconomic rise and fall of the couples; as one declines, the other rises, and the power play that ensues results in hilarity.
Probably what is most captivating about the play is that each act takes place in the kitchen. We see the kitchens of all three couples, and the kitchen becomes a beautiful metaphor to represent the state of each couple. After all, the kitchen is the place your visitors are not supposed to see - the place where you can hide all the dirt while your living is spotless and sophisticated.
Using the kitchen as the setting is brilliant because the "action" is supposed to be happening outside, and being in the kitchen is like being backstage - complete with the chaos one might expect.
So is this going to be my favorite play of 2012? No. Not by a long shot. (My favorite will likely be Theatrum Elysium's Cymbeline.) But did I enjoy it? Yes, of course.
When you find yourself stranded in Union Station at around 2 a.m. on a Friday morning, after you've spent a significant number of hours waiting for a train in a seedy area of Long Beach, you ask yourself if the play you went down there to see was worth it.
And it was.
Paige White is crazy good. I can't believe the woman was able to peform for almost two hours whilst talking the whole time. There isn't a single moment in which she's not onstage, and she's constantly in dialogue with the other characters as part of her reminiscence or with the "inquisitor" character she's telling her story to.
She's amazing.
And for writing nerds like me, this was an excellent play that brings up many issues of intellectual property, mainly the biggest one: who does art belong to?
Throughout the play, we witness the progression of how Myra Babbage (White's character) begins her fifteen-year relationship with a writer. She starts off as a gifted typist with excellent grammar, punctuation and a high WPM score, but then we watch her put her foot down over a semicolon. Soon, she knows the manuscript better than the writer himself, and towards the end of their relationship, she predicts what he's going to say next and writes it - much to his surprise and amusement.
We watch this all unfold as a series of flashbacks and stories Babbage is recounting to a journalist who's been sent by the late writer's widow - a woman who was always jealous that Babbage could be of service to her husband in a way she could not. Because the plot unfolds through recollection, White is onstage the whole time, as she, of course, cannot remember moments she didn't participate in.
And why has the widow sent someone to interview Babbage? Because she's continued finishing the manuscript she and the writer were working on. Babbage claims that these are "his" words, that she sits down and waits for them to come. Some imagine she's seeing and talking to his ghost, and when she's asked if she's writing it, she describers herself as merely a typist.
It reminded me of the relationship between Auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel, and how some scholars now think that many of the work attributed to him was actually hers, but their styles became so similar that it is difficult to discern where one ends and one begins.
Nicely done, International City Theatre!
