YAY!!! Dale! Dale Dale! I was accepted to the residency in Mexico! So I’m having a Benefit Piñata Dance Ritual with 9 amazing artists! Please support my Artist residency with 360 Xochi Qutezal at Lake Chapala and the artist of Piñata Dance Collective by Sharing the links and by Donating!
DONATE on the Indiegogo Campaign here: “Help Liz Dance in Mexico!”
The Residency: 360 Xochi Quetzal. is in Central Mexico this coming May 2014! I was accepted with 2 other artists among 160 international applicants so this is a big honor for me. They will be providing a place to stay at Lake Chapala, Jalisco, MX, and a food stipend. So, my costs are airfare, travel expenses, much needed new technology to video tape and edit my work, dance classes, pay for a videographer, a week on my own in Mexico City and to pay the 9 artists who are donating their beauty to the Piñata Celebrations Benefit on Sunday, May 4! That’s a lot! I will not be teaching or generating income for a month, (my 5 classes will be on hold) so please consider supporting the arts.
SEE our INDIEGOGO CAMPAIGN! “Help Liz Dance in Mexico” and SHARE it on FB 🙂 !
THE PLAN is to fly to Guadalajara after our Piñata Celebrations Benefit and my father’s 80th birthday in May. I will spend 3 weeks in the Residency program dancing, writing, and engaging with the land and culture. Then, on June1, I will fly to Mexico City for a week to visit more sacred sites, museums, and connect with the dance community there as well. This will be the beginning steps over the border to cultivate an artistic bridge with Mexica people, expand my Spanish capabilities, and explore my body’s movement in the land of my ancestral roots.
DALE! DALE! DALE! Please come celebrate and see my work in an informal showing of “Piñata Dances” at Shawl Anderson Dance Center in Berkeley on May 4, 4pm, 2014!!! $5-$50 sliding scale. Mark your calendar (with a donation above $20, you will receive 2 tickets free).
Audience will be invited to participate in an optional blindfolded exploration of the senses and invited to view excerpts of Piñata dances and improvisational scores based on a new interpretation of the Piñata ritual.
Piñata Dances confront identity, the impermanent nature of the body and offer an educational context that reveals the history and meaning of La Piñata.
Directed and Performed by: Liz Boubion
Contemporary Dance Trio: Jeanette Male, Dominique Nigro, Sophie Stanley,
Traditional Aztec Dance for Huitzilopochtli: Cuauhtemoc MitotePeranda,
Chinese Traditional dance: Katherine He, Siu-Wei Huang
Improvisation: Bricine Mitchell, Rebeca Sanchez Glazer, Meghan Ballog and all other performers.
Live Music: Afia Walking Tree, Regina Wells Rashida Oji, Bricine Mitchell
The Piñata holds ancient and contemporary implications of celebration, loss and regeneration for Latina/o culture and the world at large. Originally, before it was the paper mache sculpture filled with candy that children smash open with a blindfold and stick, the Piñata was birthed in China as a New Year celebration. During his travels in China, Marco Polo gathered it up and brought it back to Italy where it was appropriated to Catholicism representing 7 deadly sins. From Italy it swung to the Spaniards who colonized Mexico. The Aztecs had their own ritual during the winter solstice that included the breaking open of a clay pot filled with water as a prayer for the return of the Sun God, “Huitzilopochtli”-(“Hummingbird on the Left”). In essence, it was a prayer for sustainability which is relevant for our precarious world today. Now, Piñata is used for many occasions including birthday parties which personalizes the game, singing “Dale Dale Dale, no pierdas el tino, porque si lo pierdes, pierdes el camino…”(Hit it Hit it Hit it, don’t loose your aim, if you loose it, you loose your way”).
As a choreographer, Piñata has a changing score. It is a symbol of impermanence and the temporary nature of Dance. “Piñata” deconstructed, has been performed in several venues as a multi-media stage piece, an outdoor ritual, a gallery installation, or a public workshop that includes an interactive performance with the audience. As performers, we embody the physical and emotional imagery of Piñata and work symbolically with what is inside shaping our movement and sound. The mythology changes with each performer and each setting. See: http://vimeo.com/53238453
Con mucha gratitud!!!
Elizabeth
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