Las Negras Theater Collective
Soundings Read Spanish Version
Las
Negras Theater Collective
‘A
contemporary voice in the here and now’
By
David Whitman
There
is a section of the Amazon where the black waters of the Rio Negro
and the paler, sandy-colored Rio Solimões converge and then
flow together for many miles before mixing.
It
is a strange and beautiful occurrence of nature attributed to
differences in the speed, temperature and water density of the two
convergent rivers. The undulating patterns where the rivers come
together are said to have inspired the mosaic walkways of Manaus and
Rio de Janeiro: waves of alternating dark and light stones.
I
came upon a mighty metaphorical river that reminded me of those two
Amazonian rivers a decade ago in Miami. It also flowed from Brazil,
though it had other sources, too, in Cuba and the Pacific Northwest
in the form of three remarkable performance artists of different
colors and cultures who had converged in South Florida: Giovanni
Luquini, Jennylin Duany and Elizabeth Doud.
Independently
and in different ways, the three artists are undeniably powerful —
on stage, back stage, off stage. They are commanding as both solo and
ensemble performers, writers and choreographers. As a team
(Akropolis, and later Giovanni Luquini Performance Troupe), they’ve
created and performed “renegade dance theater” with an impressive
line-up of international dancers, actors, composers, musicians, film
makers, set and lighting designers, and a phenomenal Argentinean
costume designer named Estela Vrankovich.
I
saw the début in 1998, in South Beach, of their first
collaborative dance-theater work, Wrong
Clue. I
still remember it clearly; it was unlike
anything else that was being offered at the time in Miami. Inspired,
I volunteered to work with them as a documentary photographer, and
soon I counted Gio, Elizabeth and Jennylin among my closest friends.
Their
work radiates athleticism, grace, theatrical magic, and intelligent
humor splashed with more serious social commentary. It challenges,
taunts, flirts, provokes, propels, disturbs, dazzles. Of the hundreds
of cultural events I’ve attended in South Florida, images from
their rehearsals, workshops and performances are among the most vivid
and enduring of all.
Elizabeth
Doud is a self-described “poet, performer, graphics junkie and
optimistic absurdist who is influenced by contemporary movement forms
and pop art, as well as the art and culture of flamenco and
capoeira.” Recently
she recounted for me how her artistic partnership with Duany and
Luquini came to be. “I think I can safely say that in the world of
the performing arts, one starves unless one has a community of people
to work with because you cannot train or really produce anything
without accomplices. Maybe that’s a group, a company, a collective,
a class, whatever, but there really is no theater unless there is a
company of sorts because it is by its very nature a collective
endeavor, and one that requires the talents of many hands and minds.
“I
had the very good fortune of marrying a choreographer [Giovanni
Luquini] and crossing paths with an actress [Jennylin Duany], both of
whom were as hungry to create work as I was, and neither of whom was
happy with what they felt was available to them as a ‘work group.’
“We
began to produce together in 1997 and a year later made a full-length
work of dance theater called Wrong
Clue.
That project marked the beginning of a long collaborative
relationship of production and performance that lasted until 2006.
“We
decided then, for personal and professional reasons, to split up our
efforts and pursue projects on our own. I started working on my Frida
Jones. At
the same time, Giovanni
created Idalina and
Jennylin Cabaret
Unkempt;
both of which I participated in.”
These
days it is nearly impossible to find the three of them together in
the same place. Giovanni is immersed in projects in his native Brazil
while Jennylin and Elizabeth, based in Miami, work together as Las
Negras Theater Collective and are touring extensively.
Cabaret
Unkempt is
a multimedia theater production of Las Negras commissioned by Diverse
Works and the Carnival (now Arsht) Center for the Performing Arts. It
was part of the 651 Arts Salon Series in Brooklyn in April 2006, had
a creative residency at Diverse Works in Houston in October 2006, and
premiered in Miami in December 2006. During the past year, Cabaret
Unkempt has
toured in Latin America and the U.S. It is being presented next month
by the
Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana (MACLA) in San Jose,
California,
on October
10 and 11, 2008.
David
Perez is MACLA’s coordinator of literary and performance art
programs. He says that “Cabaret
Unkempt represents
the kind of innovation that art needs in order to survive. Their
aesthetic makes use of traditional forms but does not mimic them. It
turns them inside out and, to the extent that we have come to
normalize and self-identify with those traditions, it turns us inside
out along with them.
“Cabaret
Unkempt broadens
the scope of what is typically seen as Latino,” says Perez. “One
might look at them and see them as ‘black and white,’ but then
they open their mouths and you hear Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.
One looks at them and might see ‘too heavy and too thin’ but they
use their bodies with an authority that challenges the shame
associated with conventional notions of beauty — this sense that we
have to apologize for not looking how we should. Their appearance
creates expectations that contradict their performance. This forces
us to realize that we have conditioned responses coloring how we see
the world. I hope that their work will give us some insight into how
to change this in ourselves and our world.”
At
the premiere of Cabaret
Unkempt in
Miami two years ago, during an unforgettable scene where Duany takes
us outside the bodies that can weigh us down, there were tears in the
audience. Backstage that evening after the performance, I was hoping
that Cabaret
Unkempt would
travel far beyond Miami, and that it would propel Duany and Doud onto
the national stage.
I
asked David Perez why he thought that Cabaret
Unkempt would
be relevant to his city of nearly 1 million at the south shore of the
San Francisco Bay. “San Jose is about 30% Latino,” he points out,
“yet the Latino art that’s readily available doesn’t reflect this
number. And much of the Latino art that’s out there is dedicated to
preserving traditional forms rather than escalating beyond
established conventions. While I am all for recognizing the origins
of Latino art, I am not as concerned with losing touch with the past
as I am about ensuring that we have a strong contemporary voice in
the here and now.”
“We
are committed to pushing this movement forward using cutting edge
visual, performance and literary art. While we recognize the role of
traditional art forms in our community, MACLA specializes in pursuing
the boundaries — in art that changes as people change and that
challenges conventional notions of community, society and what it
means to be Latino. The only way that art can interpret and transform
society is for it to abandon itself to constant change. This spirit
of evolution drives everything we do.”
According
to Perez, “Jennylin Duany and Elizabeth Doud are the artists the
world needs. They are irreverent yet polite. They are unrecognizable
yet strangely familiar. You can talk to them all day and they’ll
focus all their attention on you. Yet if you ask them, they’ll share
anything with you. Despite being very down to earth there is this
quality about them, in their words and, more deeply, in their voices
that at every moment they casually expect the utterly impossible to
occur. I can’t easily describe how watching their show makes me
feel. It makes me believe in telepathy and voodoo.”
For
more information on Cabaret
Unkempt and
the Movimiento
de Arte y Cultura Latino
Americana, visit www.jennylinduany.com and www.maclaarte.org
