“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.

THEATRE REVIEW, El Mercurio, www.emol.com, August 5th, 2012

XIBALBÁ, Intense and Shocking Pedro Labra Herrera This is Natalia Cuéllar third remarkable work in the difficult and strange butoh art. "Xibalbá" has a very simple plot: a maiden makes a sacrificial pilgrimage to the underworld, a dark place of sickness and death according to the Mayan mythology, unknown and dangerous, harmful and disturbing, in which she will have to face her own contradictions. However, this is only the guiding thread of the sensory and deep ritual that invites us, an esoteric and fundamental journey on a level beyond ours of altered conscience, capable of causing something like a sacred terror in any who permits to be taken by it. Closest to "Xipetotec" in 2004, in comparison to the most recent -and also commendable-, "Cuerpo quebrado" (2008), in this play, Cuéllar, who created it, directed it and performs it, reveals her rigorous control of that unclassifiable expression which is the “butoh”, risen in Japan after Nagasaki and Hiroshima, meaning "dance of death" or "into the shadows", but tends to be around the concept of theatre performance in The West society. It relies on tense and convulsed movements, impossible shiverings and torsions, off the axis and on the edge of losing balance, based on the expressionist distortion and the extreme exacerbation, completely opposite to the stylization of the dance itself. As part of this, the officiant is presented as a possessed, in state of trance person, in a similar way of a grotesque and disarticulated doll coming from a ghostly world or a nightmare. On this occasion, it introduces for the first time the explicitly sexual factor, suggesting the Eros and Thanatos connection, and in a body display her shoulder blades manage to achieve their own life. The second performer, Aníbal Sandoval, makes a significant contribution in which he appears as a Xibalbá guardian or guide through this descent or immersion to the abysses; he emits guttural sounds and he plays the “didjeridú” on stage too, millenary aerophone from the Australian Aborigines, whose deep and original vibration joins the recorded music to create the impressive, shocking, magical and ancient atmosphere. The lights, the wardrobe and makeup, and the textures on stage (mud, dirt), complete the suggestive set of stimuli. It lasts only 45 minutes, but it is very intense.

XIBALBÁ, THE PLAY

XIBALBÁ PLAY OVERVIEW According to the “Popol Vuh” (religious Mayan book which narrates the origin of mankind) and the Mayas, the essential knowledge can only be obtained in the subterranean dimension of reality, that is, the underworld. Xibalbá is the Reign of the dead and, at the same time, is an inner dimension that takes the human being to other states of conscience at the moment of his or her decease. One of the most well-known sacrifices was the virgin maids one, where they were thrown to big subterranean caves to marry with the God of Death. ABOUT THE PLAY A young woman is torn between the honor of being chosen and the nostalgia of a life she couldn’t have, making a sacred journey which will take her to the encounter with the God of Death. In her body, the contradictions that go with her are reflected: the honor to be the chosen one, and with that, her renunciation to love, pleasure and motherhood. In her way to the underworld, she will try to rebel herself, leaving her life in a dance which makes her go through different emotional states. NATALIA CUÉLLAR COMMENTS XIBALBÁ rises as a personal search between life and death, it’s a reflection about giving and purification. The way of pain that the maid has to go through, is the only possibility to travel to the original seed of her creation. Xibalbá is a ritual, a sacred journey, a sacrifice.

XIBALBÁ SELECCIONADA PARA STGO A MIL 2013

La noche del 11 de Octubre, en el Centro El Cerro, Barrio Bellavista, se lanzó oficialmente la programación nacional de la versión XX del Festival Internacional de Teatro Stgo a Mil 2013. La obra de teatro butoh XIBALBÁ, dirigida por Natalia Cuéllar, es una de las seleccionadas para presentarse en este importante evento veraniego que se realizará del 3 al 20 de Enero próximo. La sala y fechas exactas de las funciones de Xibalbá están por confirmarse. La Compañía Teatro Ruta de la Memoria agradece al Festival Stgo a Mil y especialmente al jurado seleccionador la oportunidad de estar presente en esta ocasión, así como también a todos aquellos que lo hicieron posible con su apoyo y reconocimiento a nuestro trabajo. Cabe mencionar que, esta será la primera vez que el teatro butoh hará su aparición en la programación oficial del festival. (En la foto Anibal Sandoval, intérprete y Natalia Cuéllar, directora e intérprete de Xibalbá)

SEMINARIO DE BUTOH Y MEDITACIÓN FÍSICA, dirigido por Natalia Cuéllar