To view a clip* (3.9 MB) from ¿dónde estás?, a performance by the Judy Dworin Performance Ensemble, click on the image above. (At this time, the clip may only be availiable to viewers with high-speed Internet access. A compressed/streaming version will appear here soon.)
*Permission of Judy Dworin in collaboration with Marjorie Agosín; composers, Juan Brito and Angela Luna Grano; and the Judy Dworin Performance Ensemble.
The power of performance . . . in a world where we are inundated with technological systems that I could not have imagined as a child, there is still the power of performance. A direct encounter, an opportunity to dialogue with an audience, exchange energy, create visual, kinesthetic, and aural landscapes that challenge, provoke, evoke – to touch the universal human, to catalyze change.
Artists can be change agents, global workers bringing the world-wide political to the personal, encouraging engagement, encouraging active receiving, encouraging people to care.
This is how I see my role as a creator of performance. Grounded in movement and dance, I have always been interested in a synthesis of forms-finding the seamless connection between the spoken word, the physical body, music, light, and sound.
I work in a collaborative process. My ensemble, the Judy Dworin Performance Ensemble, is a collective of performing artists – each person brings the richness and range of her experience to the development of the work. As the artistic director I share the visions, images, and impulses of the idea that is germinating in my head and then begin to shape the material that evolves improvisationally from the ensemble. There is a real dialogue here – a give and take – that is foundational to the work and to the process from which it develops.
My work always comes from a direct encounter – an experience that triggers a chain of images. It starts with the personal and, as the work develops, ideally it moves to the universal.
My perspective is that of a woman and my work often speaks to issues of gender, the environment, and oppression. I feel that we are at a critical juncture in global history when women’s voices are coming forward. I will quote here from an article that I wrote in Ellison Findly’s Women’s Buddhism, Buddhism’s Women, “Performing Mandalas, Buddhist Practice in Transition.”
The systems that male dominated cultures have created which move us into the twenty-first century, have encouraged us to believe that more is better than less, that faster is better than slower, and that power is to be expressed in material possessions and control, not only of ourselves, but of others. . . As women begin to be heard in both sacred and societal circles, they can bring alternatives to these realities-they can catalyze change . . . .As the old ways become tired and begin to counter progress in its most holistic sense, the arts and performance can channel a resounding voice in the development of spiritual and global consciousness. (354-5)
Thus, I have created pieces on themes such as the oppression of women accused as witches in seventeenth-century New England (Burning); the demise and rebirth of the early goddess cultures of Eastern Europe (MA); identity issues of being a woman (Tub; Axe Dance; My Body, My
Body; Mr. Safe-T); and issues concerning the protection of the
Earth (Rains, Earthdance). I am interested in creating both personal and global awareness in my work.
Rains, probably the most widely toured piece in the repertory, is an example that illustrates this idea further. In 1991 my Ensemble was invited to perform at the National Theater in Sofia, Bulgaria. The Democracy Party had just won the election in Bulgaria-marking an end to the Communist Party dominance of so many years. On our first visit to the theater, as we toured the stage and dressing rooms, a huge rally for democracy was taking place outside. Throngs of people gathered, filled with optimism, enthusiasm, and hope. Our translator, Krassimira Borkovska, was an ardent democrat, and during our visit she talked of the new democracy and also recounted sadder stories of the past. One that struck me was about Chernobyl.
Krassimira told a story of the May Day parade, a tradition the government put in place in which all citizens marched by the leading government officials to show their respect. On May Day 1986, the government failed to tell the people that the rain that was pouring down heavily as they walked was filled with the radioactive residue of the Chernobyl disaster. And so the people marched, unaware of the poisonous contents of the water that soaked their heads and clothing, as the government officials stood, protected and dry. This story stayed with me and continued to resonate after my return home, when the Millstone power plant in nearby Niantic, Connecticut, became a hotbed (no pun intended) of controversy concerning potential leaks and safety hazards.
Krassimira’s story became the seed of Rains, a piece about the innocent and the complicit. In this piece, umbrellas are the key set element. Krassimira’s voice introduces the piece and the direct transmission of Krassi’s real experience, communicated through her voice, has a potent impact. Through the direct transmission of her story, the issue of Chernobyl becomes more personal – we not only think of the issue, but we feel the person amidst visual, kinesthetic, and aural stimuli that bring a visceral reality to it all. This combination is what gives Rains and its message its power.
Most recently I am working on a full-evening work
entitled ¿dónde estás?, a piece based on the Mothers of the Detained and Disappeared in Chile and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina. It is a piece that is a testimony to the courage of these women who dared to protest the disappearance of their children and loved ones at a time when the larger public was silenced by the terrorism of the military regimes of Pinochet (Chile, 1973-1990) and Agosti, Videla, and Massera (Argentina 1976-83). The goal of these regimes was to eradicate subversives. However, their tactics were meant to make everyone feel vulnerable. Their method was called “disappearing”- seizing people from their homes, their workplaces, from the streets and most often taking them to torture centers for brutal and methodical torture. Most of these people were never seen again and are now surmised dead. Estimates in Chile are 3,000 disappeared; in Argentina 30,000.
What follows are excerpts from journal entries on a trip I made recently to Chile and Argentina as part of the research for this piece. This journal was prepared for an upcoming article in Northeast Magazine, Hartford Courant, Hartford, Connecticut.
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August 16, 2000
5:00 pm
JFK Airport
In the airport, at JFK, waiting for our flight to Santiago, Chile to board, and remembering when this journey really began:
I am sitting in the front row at a reading by international poet and human rights activist Marjorie Agosín at Trinity College. I have not read her work before, but am drawn to the announcement sponsored by the newly established Human Rights Program. I feel a special anticipation as I sit down.
Marjorie starts to read poems about the Mothers of the Disappeared in Chile and Argentina who protested the disappearance of their children and loved ones during the military regimes of the 1970s and 1980s. Marjorie’s voice has a melodic flow-there is a grace and dignity about her as she reads of the pain that has resulted from totally undignified and unimaginable cruelty. As she reads, images come to mind. . . . they are like stage pictures and I realize that the seed of a new piece is taking root.
I have vague knowledge of the Mothers of the Disappeared – recollections of the tragic ending of Allende’s government in Chile, but these images of Marjorie’s are pulling me and I know that this is a road to be more deeply investigated. I see a general – he is huge – walking on bodies – piles of them. He is cold and unfeeling. . . there is no recognition that he is treading on human life – no sense, no conscience; he treads heavily only aware of himself. He walks in a shadowy dusk like environment. He exudes a sense of power, and the Mothers combat that power with their own courage.
The biological drive of a mother to fight for her young – against all odds and without relenting – strikes me intellectually and viscerally at this moment.
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Friday, August 25, 2000
8:15 am
Santiago
Yesterday we visited Violeta Morales, one of the Mothers of the Detained and Disappeared. Five of us crowded into a cab to get there-Paloma, the translator, 15 year-old Morella Torres, whose mother, Marta Torres, taught us the cueca in Hartford, Morella’s cousin Monica, and Blu and me.
Violeta invites us into a small front room of her modest home. Once she starts her story of the disappearance of her brother the story pours out in an uninterrupted flow. She has spent 27 years of her life in this struggle. The chronology, the memories, are clear, alive, and present. She talks of the horrors of the regime, the tortures, the endless searching for her brother, constantly being given misinformation and lies, the waiting, the anxiety, the courage of the group of Mothers of the Detained/Disappeared who begin to make arpilleras, small quilts, out of the remnants of their loved ones’ clothing to smuggle out the real story to the world, who begin to sit down in front of traffic in the streets as protest, having timed how long it takes for the police to arrive so they disperse just before the authorities get there.
She talks about trips to Canada, the international attention they begin to receive, the horrible murders of a whole generation, dynamiting women’s stomachs, endless horrors. One wonders at the inhumanity of man. It is breathtaking. I have a chance to watch Morella and Monica’s expressions, listening in Spanish, as I wait for Paloma to translate for us. Their faces show a concentrated attention and they shudder at the ugliness of all of this. Paloma, who is not too much older than they – 26 years – was not even born at the start of the coup. She gasps several times and has to collect herself to translate the story. It is so important for this next young generation to hear Violeta’s story.
She has now filled an hour of tape. We all take a break and she brings out her collection of patterns for the arpilleras she makes today. One after another she shares them with us. They are wonderful – the ideas, the depictions, sometimes there is humor, in several there is hope – a spirit of regeneration. She is an artist in her own right.
Then she begins to show her collection of a thick book cataloguing all of her legal efforts to find her brother. Posters, newspaper clippings. She shows us photos in the newspapers of demonstrations and protests. She talks of being arrested – how they let her out of jail often just before her curfew so that there was a chance of her not making it home in time in which case she could be shot. She never flinches in telling us this – this unassuming woman in her quiet spoken way, tells us of her courage, of her willingness to take risks, of her ability to face her fear, with a modesty that is incredible. She speaks of the 30 women in her group. Ten remain. Many have died. She says stress and anxiety deteriorates the health. Several have died of cancer. She talks of a 17-day hunger strike that the Mothers did. This cost them dearly healthwise. Some died from it. She herself now suffers from severe asthma that began after the fast.
We are nearing an end to the conversation. She begins to gather some of the posters, flyers, and newspaper articles. “Here,” she says, “these are for you. They are originals,” she says. “There are none left after these. I want you to have them.” I am overwhelmed. She says, “we need to let future generations know. You are helping with this.”
I give her a pin that Hartford artist Chris London designed. It is a clay pin with a hand inscribed on it. Chris calls the design “the healing hand.” I tell Violeta this and she smiles “for my asthma.”
I then give her two white candles with a small rose painted on each. “For the memory of your brother.” At this she begins to weep. The grief, the pain is still so palpable. It is huge. I tell her that the work she has done and the way she has done it is a model for all of us. And it is. We wave good-bye and as she stands there in the doorway there is a promise in that small gesture that this is not the last time that we will see each other.
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Thursday, August 31, 2000
6:00 pm
Buenos Aires
We are marching on the Plaza de Mayo. Mathilde Mellibovsky is wearing the red scarf that I gave her yesterday and we are walking arm-in-arm. When we begin, she says “It’s nothing special, we just walk. Before it was more difficult. We were chased and beaten.” Pigeons crowd our path and Mathilde shoos them away. Behind us is a large group of banner-carrying women. These are the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo led by Hebe Bonafini. They display another banner at a table nearby. I later find out that it says, “To accept compensation is prostitution.” This is one of the basic differences between the two groups. The founding Mothers feel that it is acceptable for families of the disappeared to receive compensation offered by the government in acknowledgement of their losses. They say that children of the disappeared and some families depend on it. Hebe’s group has said, absolutely no. The sign displayed in the Plaza underscores this in a loud voice. So Mothers who once circulated the plaza together in a common cause now walk in separate groups.
As Mathilde and I walk a young man with long hair joins us. He and Mathilde begin a warm and animated conversation. She tells me that both his parents were disappeared when he was four years old. He was with his mother when she was taken. Now that he is a young man, he joins the Mothers on their march.
The Mothers are diminishing in number. Mathilde points out over tea later that they lost four founding Mothers this past year. “It was a big loss,” she says. “Soon the children will have to take over.”
We continue to walk in a circle around the plaza. I am reminded of how this ritual began. At first the Mothers gathered in a group at the Plaza and the police, in an effort to disperse them, would say, “Circulate, circulate!” And so they decided to do just that, walking around and around the Plaza from 3:30 to 4:00 on Thursdays without fail. Later there were longer vigils, more dramatically presented, with throngs of people. And now, twenty-five years later, they still circle the plaza, resisting not only their adversaries but their impending age. And again I think about the energy of place – of this place that speaks of the heroism of women putting their lives on the line for their loved ones. The personal transforms into the political.
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Afterthoughts:
It is after midnight and we are on the plane bound from Buenos Aires to New York. I watch as the videotaped map shows our increasing distance from Buenos Aires.
There will be a day to re-enter life at home and then rehearsals begin with the ensemble.
I think about the notion of memory and art and am reminded of a conversation that I had with Juan Brito in Chile during this trip. Juan was telling me that there is a big argument among intellectuals in Chile about memory. Some say, you must just go on from horrible events like the terrorism of Pinochet’s regime. . . that it is not healthy for individuals to stay in the memory of such things. If mentioned in history books, they are treated superficially, downplayed. Others say it is critical to remember – to tell the stories – not only for those who went through it, but for those who didn’t. I am reminded of a video I saw shortly before I came here, The Last Days. It is the testimony of five Hungarian Jews – survivors of the Holocaust and the camps who tell their stories. We see them visiting the camps with their grandchildren. One woman remarks that initially after the experience, wherever the survivors migrated, they felt ashamed to tell their stories – perhaps surviving seemed like an act of shame. And who could understand such darkness? I believe that telling our stories is key not only to personal, but to cultural survival. And in the recounting of these stories, especially those that are filled with darkness, there can be healing, personally and culturally.
Not all storytelling is art, but we who are artists can craft these stories together in such a way that one can see the universal in the personal – the story transcends the individual and says something larger.
It is not about forgetting. It is also not about getting stuck in the past. We create memory so that it is possible to go on, having expressed, having learned from, we can then infuse the present and the future with that understanding.
I think of ¿dónde estás?. Out of this composite human experience that I now witness after the fact through stories, through memories, through the energy of people and places, I can transpose and transform, create a performance event in which the audience, whether they are from Chile or Argentina or wherever, can participate, can engage their own personal experience and common humanity in a journey that hopefully brings them to a new place, not with easy answers but rather with insights, understandings, questions, and perhaps motivation for change.
To conclude, I hope through all of my work to help build an international network of artists, artists who are working both to preserve memory and catalyze change at a critical juncture in global history through the immediacy and the energy of the performed moment.
