“Entre Las Luces y Pensamientos”
In March of 2021, as vaccinations slowly rolled out to a world completely traumatized by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pilot Dance Project’s first-ever Texas Latino/a/x Contemporary Dance Festival made its way to our screens with ample doses of beauty and comfort. I remember watching choreographer Dorianne Castillo’s Entre Luces y Pensamientos on this program and being taken by her choice not to use the expanse of the performance space but rather delineate it down with dozens of lighted candles into a modest rectangle, reminiscent of what most of us in the dance world had been using to practice our craft during this time. Two dancers enter the space carrying candles, seemingly lost in their own thoughts, much as we all wandered about during that isolating time. At first, the two women in simple flowered dresses are quite separate from each other, filling the lighted area each in their turn with fluid gestures and delicate arms and legs that sweep the space, as if each dancer is exploring the loneliness in search of engagement. When they find each other, the confined space, still imbued with sadness and vulnerability, starts to feel energized and sheltering. The dance communicated that kindred souls are out there, surrounding us with their light and offering us the gentle solace of connection.
Originally scheduled to debut in March 2020, the first iteration of the Festival was canceled due to the onset of the pandemic. As we all began to tenuously emerge the following Spring, so did the Festival, reimagined as a completely virtual program filmed at the Midtown Arts & Theater Complex Houston (MATCH) and available for streaming.
A piece by Dorianne Castillo. Photo: Lynn Lane
Given the resilient artistic vision that found a way for a festival to come into being despite the limitations of that time, it is not surprising that the Festival continued and now celebrates its 5th anniversary with two stellar programs on April 18 & 19 at the MATCH. Watching that first festival, under a homemade shawl in our tiny New York apartment, I was quite taken with Castillo’s Entre Luces y Pensamientos as well as Adam Castañeda’s A Quiet Ending, and it is exciting that both of these choreographers will be showing work on this year’s festival, along with many other choreographers from across the US and beyond.
The Texas Latino/a/x Contemporary Dance Festival is dedicated to elevating the voices of Latinx choreographers and exploring the expansiveness of Latinx identity. As Adam Castañeda, the Pilot Dance Project’s artistic director and the driving force behind the Festival, explains: “It’s important now more than ever to understand that the term Latinx is simply an umbrella term that houses myriad cultural traditions, historical contexts, and societal perspectives. There is no single way to identify as Latinx. What this festival demonstrates is the multiplicity of this constructed term, and does so through the beauty of human movement.”
A piece by Dorianne Castillo. Photo: Lynn Lane
Opening night of the Festival will feature the premiere of Kahlo Colors, a work that celebrates the life and creative process of the painter Frida Kahlo by Dorianne Castillo. The idea of color in this new work brings forth a number of explorations of the meaning of the word. The first movement of the work quite literally seeks to conjure Kahlo’s relationship to color in her canvases: a chorus of dancers undulate like brush strokes across the stage while in the foreground, Castillo interacts with a long stream of brilliantly colored red rope, winding it around her and seamlessly navigating through it. I have heard painters say that the paint has a mind of its own when it meets the canvas. In Castillo’s work, the captivating complexity and juxtaposition of figures make it seem as if the paint is crafting its own choreography. The work quite deftly explores the intensity of an unspoken dialogue between the painter and her palette.
In the second and third parts of Kahlo Colors, we see the use of the word color as it refers to temperament and temperature. The second movement is inspired by Kahlo’s Las Dos Fridas (The Two Fridas), her famous work that depicts two self-portraits holding hands: one Frida wears traditional Tehuana dress while the other wears western dress, often described as “modern western dress,” but clearly the western dress of decades before the work was painted in 1939. Perhaps this is the artist trying to emerge from what she perceives as her former selves after her divorce from the painter Diego Rivera. The long coil of broken artery in Las Dos Fridas echoes Castillo’s use of a cord in the first movement of her dance, as if painter and choreographer are in dialogue across time. The third section is inspired by the words of Frida Kahlo, using text from letters to Diego Rivera.
“A Quiet Ending.” Photo: Lynn Lane
As a nod to the Festival’s beginning, the opening night program will once again begin with Castañeda’s A Quiet Ending, a nuanced tribute to the choreographer’s grandmother set to a score by bassist and composer Sonia Flores. Four dancers in richly embroidered Mexican blouses and long black flowing skirts offer choreography that combines a distinct gestural language with spiraling expansive movements and jumps that resolve into melting shapes. It is as if the presence of a loved one is gentle but strong, as if they are four people at once and everywhere at once, giving us a work less about grief and more about the shape of a love that stays with us always.
M. Gabriela Estrada’s “Despierta!”
On the second night of the Festival, choreographer M. Gabriela Estrada presents Despierta! a work inspired by the legend of Mexico City’s volcano, Iztaccihuatl, known as Mujer Dormida (Sleeping Woman). Estrada describes the work as a “poetic reflection on Mexican female icons, from rich Aztec symbols to current sociocultural forces.” Currently an associate professor of dance at the University of Houston, Estrada is an internationally renowned dance educator, artist, journalist, and filmmaker whose creative and pedagogical experience embraces Western theatrical dance forms, musical theatre, and flamenco, as well as Spanish and Latin American dance.
The 5th Annual Texas Latino/a/x Contemporary Dance Festival includes works by many other choreographers from across the country, as well as from Mexico and Guatemala. Houston audiences will have the opportunity to see the work of 20 different artists over the two-night run, with a different line-up each night.
Dorianne Castillo’s “Silenced Souls.” Photo: Lynn Lane
Two years ago, at the 2023 Festival, Dorianne Castillo presented Silenced Souls, inspired by the “Forgotten: Women in Juarez” podcast, with projections based on drawings by artist Andrea Arroyo. The work packed a considerable emotional heft, a skillful handling of narrative, and an effective use of visual art projection. It was also hauntingly beautiful. I need only to reflect on this work to know that Festivals like the Texas Latino/a/x Contemporary Dance Festival are a sustaining force in our creative community, giving new voices a platform for expression and audiences the gift of truly fine work.
Tickets and full festival line-up are available here.
1 comment
Such a gracefully written article – thank you, Ms. Brangwen!