Brava Presents Ballet Nepantla’s
Mística
Fri & Sat, September 29 - 30, 2023
at 8pm on Brava’s Main Stage
BALLET NEPANTLA is a New York City-based professional company that partners with the Edinburg Dance Theatre, a nonprofit organization based in Edinburg, TX. Founded and directed by South Texas native ANDREA GUAJARDO, Ballet Nepantla fuses classical and contemporary ballet with Mexican folklórico. Through innovative choreography and harnessing the musical richness of traditional narratives, Nepantla will perform Mística a story ballet that honors the dead.
Mística tells stories of the ancients through new choreographic renditions of El Venado, Viejitos, and other traditional favorites. New stories also emerge, performed in black light, as the dead come to life in celebratory fashion.
Ballet Nepantla’s choreography employs a fusion style of storytelling, where Mexican folklórico, classical ballet, and contemporary dance come together to create an emerging genre. Mística honors our ancestors, and the dead take the stage as the centerpiece of the show. Performed in blacklight, Mística ignites the senses and accentuates the evocative beauty of Día de Muertos.
This programming received support from the California Arts Council, WESTAF (the Western States Arts Federation), and the National Endowment for the Arts.
“Every choreographic step was like a musical note in a beautifully composed score.”
TICKETS
$32 orchestra
$22 mezzanine
*Plus Fees
COMPANY BACKGROUND
Ballet Nepantla takes its identity from the artistic inspiration to explore the spaces in-between classical/contemporary ballet and traditional Mexican folklórico. The company delves into cultural, historical, and artistic spaces of tension, conflict, and ambiguity by bringing together contrasting artistic traditions. The Texas Observer described Ballet Nepantla's fusion as “contemporary dancers who weave in and out of the folklórico dancers in an ethereal braid entwining new and old, seduction and pursuit, and life and death” (September 2017). New York Latin Culture Magazine said, “What New York City Ballet’s George Balanchine did with the folkloric dances of his native Russia, Ballet Nepantla is doing with the folkloric dances of Mexico” (February 2019). And The Monitor called Nepantla "an ambassador for folklórico and Mexican culture (October 2019).
Ballet Nepantla is also a search for identity, as it examines the cultural, historical, and political identities of being Mexican, being American, and artistic production while living in both worlds. In the spirit of Gloria Anzaldúa, Ballet Nepantla pushes creative boundaries as a “forerunner of a new form” (1987) of dance. Anzaldúa was raised in the same place where Andrea grew up, and both were inspired by the verve and vigor of growing up in the borderlands. Anzaldúa popularized the idea of Nepantla, a Nahuatl term that means to be in a state of in-between-ness: in the world of art, literature, cultural criticism, and really, anywhere.
This dance company exists as a significant artistic, organizational, and historical marker. According to noted cultural anthropologist Olga Najera Ramírez, there has not yet been a sustained professional concert dance company in the United States that represents Mexican folklórico. Traditional folklórico companies tend to be non-professional and community based. As Ballet Nepantla approaches its five-year anniversary in 2022, the company stands as testament to what is possible for artists in the Latino community who seek to forge new ground in the world of professional art.
During the pandemic the company produced its third production titled Mística, a full-length ballet that features traditional dance pieces that honor the dead, as well as those who perished because of Covid-19.