FAN MAIL: Yara Travieso + La Medea
FAN MAIL is a writing series and gesture to celebrate dance artists who perform on the ODC Theater stage. These letters, written by ODC Theater Director, Julie Potter, are accompanied by video of full-length works from the recent season artists and archive. Special thanks to the Art Writing Workshop — a partnership between the Arts Writers Grant Program and the International Association of Art Critics.
May 18, 2020
Dear Yara,
I was excited to read about the recent drive-in theater and dance performances being staged during this “intermission” of social distancing. It made me think of your tropicalist work, “El Ciclon” with the parked cars and alligators outside in a Miami lot. You’ve always been exploring what a dance event can look like with bold visual grammar — from giant parachutes to live scored dance films like “La Medea” during which the audience plays the part of the Greek chorus. Thank you for sharing your thrilling imagination. Consider this letter fan mail.
When you were a student at Juilliard I remember how your “Choreographers and Composers” piece began with Maria Phelan wearing flippers, appearing as a lifeless scuba diver. It signaled seeds of the bold imagery and spectacle that would inhabit your future work, both live and on film. Your expansive vision, wild kinetics and flamboyant humor attract attention through suspense and surprise.
The first time I encountered the Greek tragedy, “Medea” by Euripides, I was in high school in the 90s and the work was part of a literature unit of readings linked by the archetype of “the woman scorned.” Never did I imagine this classic play could look like a Latin-disco-pop variety show in a form which also demonstrates the potential of storytelling on film through dance.
In your work, “La Medea,” you deploy cuts to direct our gaze and amplify projections onto an unknowable being. Your depictions of Medea are kaleidoscopic and multiplicitous, fracturing a classic narrative. By adopting multiple Medeas, we cannot know who she really is. In this way, you subvert archetypes of the melodramatic woman — the intuitive dark mystic, the vindictive jealous lover, the angry oppressed female. In “La Medea” you accomplish your provocation, revealing an infinite woman who rejects the limited gaze imposed upon her for centuries.
You also spin intensities, weaving the history and mystery of mask work from Greek theater. You invite the sensationalism of a talk show and the drama of the telenovela form.(Your film also prompted a quarantine-enabled internet quest to better understand the distinctions between a telenovela and a soap opera, and why they are called “soaps” anyway: the former tends toward a self-contained story whereas the latter often entails intertwined and concurrent storylines. The soap company Procter and Gamble sponsored and produced the radio shows that became daytime serials like “The Young and the Restless,” which in my youth I mistakenly thought was called “The Young and the Rest of Us.”)
Anyway, back to the Greeks. Medea is also a border story, and your film challenges the historically prevalent image of the dangerous foreigner. Moments of Spanglish and dance forms including flamenco and social dance can be seen in the film. The elegant band dressed in white, “Jason and the Argonauts,” and led by singer and guitarist Liz de Lise, guide us with a driving vamp and saxophone solo by Jeff Hudgins while we wind the corridors with Medea. The shifts of voice heightened by the score challenge traditions and portrayals of women on screen and in myth.
In a contemporary tale of betrayal and revenge, Beyoncé turned to art to make “Lemonade” and while we can only speculate what Medea would have made, this performance is one possible answer.
On a different kind of stage, I see you conducting the choreography of protest for the masses, extending the performance “Un violador en tu camino,” created by Chilean art collective Lastesis earlier this year. Before that it was your activism for DACA and dreamers with astute media literacy. You champion women filmmakers and teach young artists with kindness and generosity.
While we currently cannot visit the cinema or the theater, your genre-bending creativity, for both screen and for site, bring me great curiosity about the dance that will be staged through modes still to be imagined.
Thank you dearly for burning your soul fire bright.
Your fan,
Julie
