While I was volunteering at the Push Festival I have the luck to see Hey Girl! By Romeo Castellucci. To be honest I was expecting something similar to what I had been seeing for the last two years, traditional theatre with long texts and once in a blue moon a strong good performance. My surprise was big because I got to see a once in a life experience art work which totally influenced and inspired me.

 The stage was totally dark and there is just ambience music like texture music. One light points into a mass of a sort of melting clay. A girl starts ascending from underneath of the melting clay. Her body is delicate and fragile but at the same time strong and determined. She then puts a white t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans.   Then she goes through many symbolic images that represent the experiences women face in a traditionally phallic society. She looks herself in the mirror, she lies down next to a sword, she sprinkles perfume on the sword which is hot and makes a hissing sound, she carries the sword around the stage and she uses it to burn in a white sheet an X. She whispers the names Jeanne d’Arc and Maria Stuart. She picks up the sword. A loud noise. A neon sign in the upper right corner of the stage displays an R. The girl walks to the right. Another loud noise. A neon sign on the upper left side of the stage displays an L. The girl walks to the left. Right. Left. Right. The girl is beaten down with pillows by a group of some 30 men. The girl emerges with an enlarged mask of her own head. The girl cries. The men disperse. Some look at her through glass windows. Words and fragments from Shakespeare are projected on a screen. A black woman wearing a mask of the girl’s enlarged head emerges from the crowd of onlooking men. An old man with a beard. The black woman is undressed and chained. The glass windows break. Music. The black woman dances. Shrinking noise.

 All this images are artfully sync with sounds and lights. The stage is mostly dark for the whole time and it has good depth of field. The images are produce sometimes in the background ( men beateb her down), in the middleground ( the melting clay) or in the foreground ( she holding the hot sword). All this images were there to be interpret, to be imagen, and to be descipher for the audience so they can built the work for themselves. It was like a visual poem and a totally sensorial journey that right away get you involve. From the beginning the sound, images, lights and performance were interecting and the dominance among them was changeable. Sometimes was the movement of the girl, sometimes the overwhelming soundscape, sometims the image composed as a painting by lights, and the positioning of the subjects. There was a constant stimulus to your senses.

 After the show I went to commented with different people and I read about it in order to understand what I saw. I was totallly impressed, finally I got to see something innovative. However to my surprise few people like it which is easy to understand since Hey Girl! barely uses, one of the most relevant characteristics of traditional theatre, the text. Hey Girl! hardly has text, except for the couple times that she (the main character) whisper some names. The rest of the work is about images and soundscape. It was like seeing a bunch of paintings animated by sound and the movement of the performance. There was different art forms being put together to create something new. The compositional qualities of painting, sculture in motion as when she is getting out of the melting clay, excellent used of new media making technology invisible, irrelevant. For instance, although the sound goes a long for the whole piece, it calls your attention a couple times.

 Hey Girl! is definetly one of the best play I have seen. Some purist might argue that Hey Girl! is not theatre but for me it is because it has narrative qualities, it is perform for live actors, it has direct interaction with the audience and moreover challenge them to think harder.   

 The director Romeo Castellucci did not study theatre he studied painting and sculture. He uses dancers, professional actor, and non- actors in his works. He confess that his way to work is not based on a text of literature. He mantains that his works reveals itself like a photographic process.   

This movie describes the life of young guys who live in the slums in the outskirts of Medellin City and who were hired as Sicarios or hit men. In the 80s and 90s Medellin was worldwide known for being the house of the Cartel de Medellin. El Cartel is the given name to a bunch of humble entrepreneurs who, motivated for the huge demand from the first world countries, set up blossoming business of exportation of white gold, white powder (cocaine). All this famous business men, Dr. Pablo Escobar, come from very poor backgrounds where do not exist opportunities and you got do what you got do. As known for the many movies that deal with business subjects, in this type of world sometimes you have to used the force to make things happening, so there is when this young guys come into the game because they were cheaply hired to kill. The movie then represents the life of Sicarios who does not have any future but to longer dead.

The second movie is set up in the same Medellin City and uses non-actors kids also from the slums.

The movie describes the reality seeing through the eyes and experiences of a 12 year, or around there, girl who sells flowers in the street. Its name is LA VENDEDORA DE ROSAS

quiet translation:

if life was steady all the time/ i would not drink all my money nor waste it/ but i realize that life is a dream and before dying is better to enjoy it. (something like that) PURE POETRY BEING SING IT
This is Vallenato music my first and eternal love when it comes to music. To give you and idea of what is the structure, I will start telling you that is based in a constant melodic counterpoint between the accordion and the singer. The lyrics are quite simple and are based on the daily experience of super beautiful and simple people. They usually sing about women, friends and Parranda,( how they called the party time) and they are constantly improvising verses on the go. This music was born in the countries and in the small villages of the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Colombia is a country in South America and South America is southwards from North America where USA is, now you got it.
This music is already disappearing because of the modernization of everything. So now it is mostly a fusion with rock, and African percussion. Now it has way more instruments and I am not quite sure if you could still continue calling it Valleanto music.
However, the new genre that comes from this music has been lead from Carlos Vives and it is my second love when it comes to music.

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Here are two examples the first one is Diomedez Diaz an old timer and one of the biggest representative of this genre and the second is the new breed.
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Last weekend i have the privileged to see one of the most amazing performance i ever seen in my entire life. it was at the roundhouse and it was part of the vancouver international dance festival. it was Butoh dance but for me it was way beyond dancing. Taketeru is the name of the performer who is from japan. i was so curios about butoh because i took a Butoh Dance workshop last summer and i have continue doing it once a week. Before seen this performance, i did have a vague idea about it, but after seen it, it just blew my mind. Taketeru took me through a journey where he portrays most of  the states of human beings. rage, humor, tenderness, fragility, meditation, and an immense inner force, something interior that i am still trying to understand. His movements were delicate, strong, raw, technical, liryc, powerful, fragile, etc… he not just took over the stage he moved around the whole place among the audience. there was different moments during the performance and he changed his outfit three times. he was funny, scary, meaningful, energetic, static etcetc… his body was tense and relax and every single move was so powerful and when he was static, he was still more powerful then when he moves because there was still movement, not physical but interior and i as veiwer could feel it. that is why, it is hard to understand how a person apparently not moving can still move and be so engaging that you can not take your eyes from him.  his eyes where gone somewhereelse, he was like in a state of trance. after taking through this journey, which i am still procesing, he finished the performance just living the place through the door, he did not say goodbye to the audience neither he wait for the applause. it was so complete and so powerful that it really influenced me because it was real and sincere. it has been a live changing experience.

THE LANGUAGE IS NOT INTELLECTUAL, IT GOES STRAIGHT TO THE BODY, TO THE  SENSES, TO THE SOUL.

The tide produce for the audience… is a fundamental part of the emotion disorder of the show where everything is fragile where everything is changeable except our tempests. THE VICTIM IS REALITY.

here one of his interviews:

i received this email from a friend that constantly send me a bunch of garbage to see. however, this video has been quite interesting and revealing for me. it does not say anything new, but it really explains me many things that were not clear for me. i hope you guys enjoy it and please watch it because every single human needs to be aware of what is going on and mostly we students since we are in an privileged position. HERE  

if you look quickly to your left, death is there waiting for you. Smile you are apparently still alive, dont forget to breath though.