One of the exciting facets of site-specific performance work is how it can introduce audiences to new environments. HomeLA has been exploring both heralded and unheralded landscapes for their curated creators to respond to these chosen settings; often sites are chosen by the artists themselves.
This past weekend, Executive and Artistic Director Chloe Flores, in partnership with the La
Puente Valley Historical Society, immersed choreographers and performance artists in the 170-year-old John Rowland Mansion and Dibble Roundhouse Museum. In the building and in the surrounding areas, Eva Aguila, Nao Bustamante, Victoria Marks and Rosa Rodríguez-Frazier put their personal stamps on this well-preserved edifice.
As the program started and while docents shared artifacts and information about the site in the adjoining Dibble Museum, Rodríguez-Frazier welcomed the audience with culinary samples based on recipes recalled from the past in “Recetas de La Casa Rowland.”
The artist followed that by choreographing a procession of 18 movers dressed in a variety of off-white tops and pants in “Peregrinaje for María.” Using a full-bodied weighted dance vocabulary in unison, small group and duet partnering variations, the community traversed the cement, asphalt and hard dirt path along the outside of the structures. Trailing the action was a pre-recorded Native American drum and cumbia rebajada score, a hard driving mix of Colombian and Mexican cumbia styles.
Arriving at the Front Yard, Bustamante is dressed in a full-bodied apron and blue-feathered helmet. She carries a serving dish-sized fountain and walks around and among the viewers sprinkling water, much like a bathing avian. Making chirping sounds in nonsensical conversations, her installation, “Attracting Bluebirds,” based on research into local bird species and historic aviary migratory patterns, adds a light touch to the afternoon.
Performed a few times during the production in the small parlor of the moderately-sized abode, “Las Cosiendas” is danced by two elder women who have actual connections to the Rowland family line. Dance maker Marks has consulted archival photographs and “matrilineal lines that intertwine Indigenous, European, Mexican and Californian ancestries” to provide Millette Rowland McDonald and Martha Rodgriguez with an elegant series of poses
that results in what Marks calls “choreo-portraits.” This action is highlighted by live acoustic guitarist/singer Paulina Perez’s sweet waltz that honors the performers’ mothers’, grandmothers’ and great-grandmothers’ names. Dressed in high-collared, long black gowns with pearl-like long necklaces, the two matriarchs bring the past into the present in an affecting dialogue. Costumes are credited to the performers and Marcus Kuiland-Nazario.
In “Casita,” which is accompanied by Daniel Hill’s live trap set percussion and pre-recorded soundscape, Rodríguez-Frazier returns with a collaboratively created quartet that mines the front porch for another movement expression. Aisha Shauntel Bardge, Brianna Picazo, Dalia Popok-Romero and Tiffany Garcia dive over the balustrade, hang from the door frame, weave in and out of the building with round, churning shapes within this energetic veranda.
As a summary to all that has been presented in this collection of perspectives, Aguila invites the attendees to gather under a pergola in “The Land Holds Your Name.” Referencing the early viticulture of the area, names drawn from a 19th-century census are listed and described as being “lost to colonial erasure.” Participants ring small copper bells in this “collective act of remembrance.”
—Benn Widdey, Culture Spot LA
For information about upcoming programs, visit https://www.homela.org.
Photo from Victoria Marks’ “Las Cosiendas” by Amina Cruz