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.