Art--Its Many Disciplines

This past weekend, I experienced a truly transcendent, multi-faceted performance piece taking place in a most unlikely place: the ASU Deer Valley Rock Art Center. The performance was called Desierto Remix, and served to bring together the performance groups Nemcatacoa from Bogotá, Colombia, and Verbobala from Tucson, Arizona thanks to the organizational efforts of Mary Stephens and Casandra Hernandez under the purview of their series, Performance in the Borderlands. The former group had been on tour in the United States for six months, and works primarily in the medium of dance, with a focus on stiltwalking (yes, you read that correctly). The latter creates multimedia performances blending spoken word, postmodern dance, video, sound, and sculptural elements. And it all took place among an archaeological landmark.

The performance began just before sunset, with the near-silent emergence of two figures in dresses, entirely white, walking ever-so-slowly out of the desert, and the museum's entrance, respectively. Each held a small bell, tinkling lightly, and an umbrella, and each refused to acknowledge the surrounding audience, and moved unchallenged around the building's parking lot before standing stock still  on either side of the aforementioned Stephens and Hernandez, who spoke to introduce the evening's program.

Then, the true evening began. Ten performers, each entirely white accentuated with black face makeup, emerged in a procession from the museum's entrance. Three played flutes, one bore a staff, and five walked on the group's trademark stilts. What followed was a procession through the museum and along a path into the desert. Over 200 attendees followed the performers wherever they led, occasionally stopping for a more set element of the show. At times the pace was a gallop, and others a crawl. But without question, the performance was an immersive one. This portion of the program culminated at a dry creek bed, covered in large rocks. While one member of the troupe stood on the railing of the bridge spanning the bed and another stood at the other side, the five stilt walkers stood stock-still at the edge of the creek. Suddenly, they collapsed, and crawled across the entire span of the creek, emerging at the other end and leading the stunned crowd directly into Verbobala's performance in the parking lot.

While the Verbobala set was equally thoughtful and dynamic in many ways, nothing could match the sheer disbelief with which the audience waited for the next move of Nemcatacoa. It is something I certainly will not see again soon.