(12 November 2023, Un Teatro)
A modern ballet tells ten different stories in parallel. One experiences them develop all at once, just as one hears chord progressions in a musical piece. Interpret a dance performance too soon, before the experience of watching it has coalesced, and you have destroyed nine stories out of ten by singling out just one. Do so publicly, and you have robbed other spectators of their stories. It is best not to interpret. If one could interpret, then the medium of dance would be redundant.
What may be more profitable is to describe how watching a ballet has changed one. And even if one is unchanged, one’s sensibilities may be selectively awoken, if only for a moment. That, too, may be worthy of description. Perhaps the latter phenomenon is exactly what the incantation “you can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep” in the motion picture Asteroid City meant. To be consumed by theatre or dance is to succumb to sleep. To wake up is to walk out of the theatre with one's sensibilities sharpened.
In a typical novel or a film, the protagonist follows a positive character arc. First, he is desperate to satisfy his wants. Then, in the course of the story, he learns that his wants are at odds with his needs. He changes course. He grows. This perspective on storytelling suggests supremacy of needs over wants and a conflict between the two.
In Deseo, needs and wants are in harmony; the characters follow flat arcs. It is the audience whom the dancers invite to become heroes each complete with a conflict and a positive character arc. To this end, Act 1 prompts the audience not just to think of wants but to actually want. Act 2 parts the curtains slightly and invites the audience to walk through for a glimpse of the ultimate needs: connection and beauty.
Jessica Sandoval, Deseo's choreographer and director, along with EstefanÃa Villa and Tathanna, the dancer duo, define these needs with extraordinary precision. They do so in the language that few speak and fewer still speak fluently but everyone understands: the language of dance. What is even less common is that the artists know exactly what they want say. And they will not repeat the definitions; the production has a limited engagement. The audience members are uniquely responsible for learning the supplied definitions and for living out their assigned character arcs.
Drawing the audience in like this requires a powerful connection with the ballet's creators. Jessica Sandoval reveals the secret: “On stage, one must be free. Free means vulnerable. Vulnerable is open. Openness generates a connection.”
Deseo thus introduces connection at two levels. The dancers connect with the audience. The dancers also connect with each other. Beauty nourishes both connections.
To live is to want. To live intensely is to want passionately. To live is to live in the moment; there is nowhere else.
