“Xibalbá”: Impressive Stage Transfiguration

Written by Marietta Santi (Theatre and Dance critic) Wednesday, August 1st, 2012.- A woman whose body seems to have no limits. A woman who mantles and dismantles while the hands from another world touches her. In the butoh dance play “Xibalbá”, the performer Natalia Cuéllar transfigurates herself in a sacrified Mayan maiden, on the way to the reign of the dead. Her performance, acted on a small space and only with the support of lightning and the sonorous universe, suggests a deep sensory experience that takes the audience to intimate, oneiric and unconscious domains. The new play presented by Ruta de la Memoria company, directed by Natalia, which is on Teatro de Bolsillo, on Brazil neighborhood, lasts only 40 minutes leaving us wanting more. As she did in her acclaimed previous play, “Cuerpo Quebrado”, Natalia Cuéllar uses the butoh language to make a connection to personal issues and interests. If in “Cuerpo Quebrado”, the main plot was about pregnant dissapeared detainees women, in “Xibalbá” it is about the connection with native beliefs that she discovered in her exile in Mexico. In the first piece, the state that pursuits the butoh is accompanied by a choreographic dimension. In the second one, the language that the dancer practices since she was 16 years old, acquires its deepest dimension when it combines with the performers’ interior, their energies and tempos. Xibalbá is the name that the Mayan people use to call the place of the dead or underworld. It is not the same as the Catholic hell, since it is not about a punishment, but a logical stop. Is in that place where the human being obtains his or her major conscience, and it can be reached not only with death, also in dreams or through the consumption of drugs. The journey is also a metaphor of an inner dimension of a being, where the relation with the spirit allows it to reach spiritual states. First, Aníbal Sandoval appears on stage, as an underworld God. His presence fills the small stage and the guttural sounds that come out of his throat makes you shudder. He moves, filling the space with his voice reverberation. He slides, with his knees bent, his hands up, his fingers curled. He is the host, the dark silhouette, the final destiny. Then the maiden rises, with her back turned to the audience. Her torso dismantles, it seems that her head wouldn’t exist. The fingers in her hands look huge, transformed in the hands of the God who welcomes her. Her flesh shivers, it suffers because it leaves the world of the living, but it also recognizes the honor of sacrifice. In the background, an image remains in the partial shade of the host, who plays an ancient Australian instrument called didjeridú. Natalia Cuéllar reaches a state in which the body has no limits. Her limbs are at the disposal of an inner state, where time, as the audience knows it, doesn’t exist. Each muscle of her body trained in butoh moves in response of a feeling, transmitting something that is beyond her, achieving an impressive stage transfiguration. The sonorous space and the lightning contribute in this journey, where the audience is sensorially bombarded and transported to other dimensions. There is a lot of subtlety on the details of the mise en scene, and it isn’t necessary to “know” or to “understand”. Giving oneself over and getting carried away is enough. "Xibalbá" is a must in the billboard, a rough diamond that rocks, summons and impacts.