Animal Being

Context

The influence of the western mind is overwhelming. It has conditioned our actions, emotions,
and thoughts. We are systematically induced into a state of being alienated from reality,
immersed into a comfort state where our need to question ourselves and question how things
have been established fades out. Thus, grows the need to find ways of setting myself free from
those conditions that keep me asleep. One of my approaches has been to explore my relation
with the place I was born at, its ancestral way of living and their relation with human’s primitive
nature.

Ethnic Dance Research

Around 2012, I initiated researching surviving traditional Ecuadorian dances and feasts. That’s
how in the northern Andes region I discovered communities that commemorate annual Sun
celebrations. Despite their inner contradictions resulting from the struggle with the imposing
culture, the feast relates with nature and life in a different way. More than seeing Earth as a
material resource, they see it as a mother that nurtures us with unlimited love and care.
According to them, She’s a living being to whom we owe respect, care and retribution.

During some years, I visited Calera, a community outside Cotacachi town. I was welcomed to
participate in the celebration that takes place between 25 of June and 5 of July. Even though
their traditions have been modified, they have maintained the essential elements of the feast.
Perhaps the importance they give towards keeping the tradition is the main pillar that has held
the feast during centuries, perhaps millenniums.

The communal preparations and activities previous, during and after the main dance rituals
intend to modify the participant’s usual behavior. The costumes, weapons, the martial rhythm,
the screams, transform each one into a Warrior. The blood is beating with courage. Their
attitude towards life and death has mutated. The dancers need to take over the town’s main
square and they are willing to give up their life to protect it from the enemy. Their body acquires
fierceness of a mad bull, skills of a tiger, courage of an eagle. Once they surrender to the dance
they take out some masks from everyday life and assume a different role closer to human’s
primitive nature.

Thanks to this feast I got new lights about my position in life as a dancer, and human. To
acknowledge how important it is to question what is usually considered as normal. Having a
distance from the civilized way of life we have the chance to question our behaviors, tastes,
preferences, aesthetic values, beauty, morality, status, customs, etc. Perhaps, we can
eventually modify ourselves into what we truly are.
The performance

“Animal being” is part of a process of exploration into my own nature and the relationship I have
with my culture. It goes beyond just an animal’s moves’ imitation to go through a process where
my body wants to be. I question my own body and how it can move free from society’s
conditioning. Like at Cotacachi’s feast, I enter to a new space and discover parts of a puzzle
that constitute my complexity as human being. I gathered the pieces: dance, traditional feasts,
cultures, land, music, voice, journeys; and explore with them. On the street I had an important
push. In 2018, while travelling far away from home, having a new perspective of myself and the
culture I was born at, I did some dance explorations while performing on the street. I was
vulnerable. You never know if people are going to accept or insult you. Or even worse, ignore
you. It is a risky situation that builds up the attitude of a warrior. After several life-changing street
interventions, I slowly found a new hint about myself and my place on Earth. “Animal Being” was
born. Eventually, I brought parts of the street performance together and composed a solo
performance. Applying what I’ve learned dancing, I sought to combine contemporary dance with
traditional music, dance, and costumes creating a “mestizo”1 story.

On scene, a strange creature appears crawling down. His body is confused and cannot find
itself. Even though pain, sorrow and darkness surround him; he keeps on seeking in the dark
until he finds a mask: a piece of wood that carries within ghosts from other times, other lives,
other ways. Ancestral celebrations, vivid colors, dance, nature, humans are all condensed into a
simple animal mask. When he puts it on, the chaos starts to become a shape. Life becomes a
feast that enlightens his pathway. He transforms into different beings that dialogue with one
another. Strength, tenderness, joy, sorrow possess the body giving birth to a new being: animal
and human, ancestral and modern, mixed and pure.

Where am I going?

For me art is like drinking water. It quenches my thirst for a while and eventually new desire
arises. As I continue looking for more, I feel this water becomes more pure and it changes me
more easily. When I find, it doesn’t mean I have attained something in concrete. It just
represents lights on my journey or clues that motivate me to keep on researching. Sometimes
my exploration process gets stuck, sometimes it flows. “Animal Being” is a light that motivates
me to keep on dancing and learning about human nature and it’s close relation with ethnic
traditions.

1
“mestizo” Spanish word that means people of mixed race