DANS/PERFORMANCE
MARIO BARRANTES ESPINOZA — EL CANTAR DEL PLAYO OR… A SONG IS A ROSE IS A THORN CONCEPT EN PERFORMANCE MARIO BARRANTES ESPINOZA ARTISTIEK ASSISTENT THEO LIVESEY TEKST THEO LIVESEY, MARTÍN ZÍCARI, MARIO BARRANTES ESPINOZA MUZIEKARRANGEMENT EN SOUNDDESIGN PABLO LILIENFELD MUZIKALE REGIE EN STEMCOACHING IGNACIO JARQUÍN LICHTONTWERP RYOYA FUDETANI KOSTUUMONTWERP FLÁVIO JUÁN NÚÑEZ VIDEOPROJECTIES FEDERICO VLADIMIR STRATE PEZDIRC ARTISTIEKE BEGELEIDING MANU, MARTÍN ZÍCARI, STEFA GOVAART PRODUCTIE HIROS COPRODUCTIE HET THEATERFESTIVAL, VIERNULVIER, C-TAKT, KAAP IN SAMENWERKING MET KUNSTENCENTRUM BUDA (KORTRIJK), WORKSPACEBRUSSELS, DE SINGEL, KVS, KUNSTENWERKPLAATS, WPZIMMER, PARTS, DECORATELIER MET DE STEUN VAN DE VLAAMSE OVERHEID
DI 04.10 20:30
Excerpts from the interview with Mario Barrantes by Hazel Lam (Theaterfestival, 18/09/22) You decided on having a long title such as this and having both Spanish and English in it. What is the significance? Mario Barrantes Espinoza: ‘It is important for me to reflect that this piece deals with language and vocabularies using my native tongue, Spanish, and my second language, English, which I had to learn during my studies as a dancer here in Belgium. I moved here knowing little English but studied in a school where English is the main language. I struggled a lot in the beginning. I was not able to express myself emotionally or articulate what I needed from this institution, in classes and in daily life. I learnt through reading subtitles or Google Translate. Everything took longer and knowledge was mediated or filtered through someone else.’ ‘For the Spanish part of the title, I use a queer Costa Rican slang: Playo. The word itself corresponds to the idea of singing, poetry and music. The other part of the title responds to my interest in working with texts. For me, text is a tangible material and I took the liberty to appropriate Gertrude Stein’s poem “the rose is a rose is a rose” into “the song is a rose is a thorn”. It’s my personal statement that a lot of the knowledge I acquire from the West is either mediated or served as the priority for knowledge. So for me, it’s not that I am against Stein, but my appropriation is to make it into something that makes sense for what I have to do. I also want to go against the recent trend that titles of dance pieces are often very short or just one English word. I wanted something extra and dramatic as the title for this piece.’ This show premiered in April in Kunstencentrum VIERNULVIER this year. How’s the tour going so far? ‘I just came back from Costa Rica two weeks ago. It’s been quite hectic with rehearsals and shows in Antwerp. I need to switch back to the life I have here in Europe. With this show, I won the Roel Vernier Prijs in 2020, but it only premiered in April this year because of the backlog of bookings in theatre due to Covid, so I only started working on it in October 2021. Wow, I realise I‘m only just starting! I hope that it’ll be a long run as this is the first time I go solo and up to this level of production with a big team.’ The show is a personal quest for queer sexuality and identity, from the perspective of a Central American migrant in Europe. What exactly is that perspective? ‘My experience in this part of Europe is that when people talk about Latin America, they talk about the South, for example Argentina, or Mexico in the North. People are less informed about Central Americans in art curation. There are many artists here from this region, but there are many challenges such as financial possibilities and mobility, it is rare to see them here. After being here for so long, I want to see more of this context with the aesthetics and the realities that reflect what I am doing. Coming to Europe and joining institutions with students bearing colonial ideas of “I am coming to Europe to learn their knowledge” makes me aware of the knowledge that I already have inscribed in my body and my memory. It was suddenly undervalued and had to be erased to make space for this “good” knowledge. I have been in a constant state of resistance.‘ ‘During these three years of school, I was behind because it is impossible to learn the FOR DANCE, IMAGE & SOUND, LEUVEN whole western art, philosophy andHOUSE sociology canon in these three years. My position there was to bring value to these things that were undervalued and show that these things are knowledge where I come from. Not academic knowledge, but knowledge from
© Jonas Bang – Dream Diver, 2022 (still). Courtesy of the artist.
my body, my family, the music, the nature and the emotionality that I have experienced for so long before I came here. And most importantly, to contrast them to the aesthetics of making work here in Belgium. Studying here helps me to learn the vocabulary that they all want here and that’s also why I am able to perform this piece. I’ve #STUDIOSTUK EXPO ARTIST MOVING IMAGE AT MANHATTAN learnt to say what they want to hear. My position now is to create a space where my type of knowledge can also exist, not that I want a representation of Central America, but hopefully this is to show one of the many experiences of Central Americans moving to Europe. I hope that more doors can be opened in the future so more people can have the chances I am having now.’
DI 01.11 → Jonas Bang ZO — Dream Diver 06.11 How was it when you told your family you wanted to come to Europe to study? Has your family seen this
show? ‘It’s really sad that my mother hasn’t seen this show. Nobody in my family has seen me perform in Europe. In the beginning, they thought I was crazy to drop architecture to do theatre, and then move to dance. It was also the same year that I came out. My parents refused to pay for my studies in the arts so I went to the choir where I got N— Jonas of Bang is Rica. een Deense regisseur en filmmaker stijlI geVIEWING DATESat the National a scholarship University Costa Later, I took all my savings and told mywiens mum that was kenmerkt wordt een My rauwe enrealised poëtische enand eenthey speels oog DI 01.11to audition in Europe. going I got accepted intodoor P.A.R.T.S.. family that ittouch was real became 20:00 supportive of it.‘ voor detail. Voornamelijk gekend voor zijn muziekvideo's, is Dream Diver DO 03.11
20:00 Bang’s debuut als autonoom cineast. ZA 05.11 10:30, 12:00,of strong female figures is the central part of this piece because another aspect of it is to use melodra‘The role N — Aan het begin van de zomer, een week voordat ze afstuderen en elk 14:30, 16:00 ma, clichés and exaggerations to indulge myself in emotionality and cheesiness which was not welcomed in my & 18:00 eigen weg gaan, nodigt de band een filmploeg uit om ZO 06.11 in P.A.R.T.S. Familyhun training matters and personal life are not considered good materials for creating “interest10:30, 12:00, hun eerste – en laatste – live optreden vast te leggen. De band bestaat ing” work has this limit. 14:30, 16:00 for this institution. I feel that Europe, specifically Flanders where my work is presented, & 18:00
Dream Diver
uitabout zes jongens al 10 jaar kennenmusic van een school in Of course it’s political to talk the familydie andelkaar the intimate. This Plancha is connected to Rødovre domestic work and reproductive labour which I learntmet by heart when my mum or grandma cooking voor kinderen speciale behoeften. Onderwere leiding van and hunwashing. lerarenSo, as performance material, it expresses gender roles, the unpaid labour that has to be done and the social condiJonas Bang – Dream Diver vonden de jongens hun mojo in muziek en sound. In Dream Diver nodigen (2022). HD video, open sound, 8’ tions that underlie these songs. In a sense, this is how I carry my mother, grandma, aunts and sister with me in ze je uit in hun klinkende universum gevuld met synthetische vogelflui�Curator: Karen Verschooren this project. They travel with me.’ tjes en abstracte droomteksten.
What do you think about the gender neutrality of English? —different, Jonas Bang is a Danish director andfor filmmaker whose style is Ichar‘Gender taste in English is E way it’s flatter. (laughs) The challenge this piece is to reflect what wrote in Spanish using English, specially the gay we treattouch each other girls. Also, aredetail. using slang from acterized by aslang rawwhere and poetic and aasplayful eyewefor Mostly Costa Rica that is hard to known translate. But I’m okay with the fact that we don’t have access to everything. This for his music videos, Dream Diver marks Bang’s debut as an opens the possibility of having different understandings of the same thing and that there is not one dominant autonomous filmmaker. meaning.’
E — Early in the summer, a week before they left school and went What about the future? their separate ways, the band Dream Diver invites a film crew in to ‘I want to work in spaces that are not theatres or an–institution. see if I can makeThe an event supports document their first and last I–want livetoperformance. bandthat conand promotes artists that sists fall into the intersection of queerness and Latin America. To make a night where the of six boys who have known each other for 10 years at a school artists can have the space and create this social fabric for them to weave Latin American vibes into the city. We in Rødovre for children with special needs. Guided by their teachers must have food in it, my family’s love language is food.’ the boys found their sound, and in Dream Diver, they invite you into their space-sounding universe filled with synthetic bird whistles and abstract dream lyrics.
HOUSE FOR DANCE, IMAGE & SOUND, LEUVEN