A dance tribute to Mexican iconoclast Frida Kahlo, “Casa Azul” injects life into the legend

Fragments of a failed yet famed life will light the stage at the Macau Cultural Centre next month with the widely acclaimed “Casa Azul”, a dance tribute to Frida Kahlo.

A revered figure whose paintings captured the world’s attention through the second half of the 20th century, Kahlo’s life is portrayed with fantasy touches and exotic stage design by the Donlon Dance Company, based in Germany. The company weaves an intense performance in “Casa Azul” that mixes contemporary dance, ultra-modern staging and live Latin musical accompaniment.

Irish choreographer Marguerite Donlon has recreated Kahlo’s many faces and self-portraits. The work takes its title from the blue painted house that was Kahlo’s home, a place of refuge that came to symbolise her rich, inner world and is now a museum.

The performance features a trio of Kahlos: Spain’s Meritxell Aumedes Molinero, Argentine Yamila Khodr and Frenchwoman Lorène Lagrenade. Musician and singer Hector Zamora has the role of Diego Riveria, Kahlo’s husband and an artist frequently regarded as one of Mexico’s greatest, and Portuguese dancer Liliana Barros dances the role of Chavela Vargas, a female singer whose friendship with Kahlo is said to have stretched to the bedroom.

Fact, fantasy

Frida Kahlo de Rivera was most widely recognised for her vibrant, surrealist self-portraits. Kahlo said she painted herself “because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best”.

Her work was infused with vivid native themes and often raw depictions of a woman’s experiences – sex, rape, abortion, childbirth and infertility were all recurring motifs.

The brutal honesty and black humour of her work won many fans among North American artists first, then the emerging feminist movement and finally a global audience.

Hers was a life plagued by illness – including polio – and the fallout from a traffic accident while a teenager. She was run down by a bus in Mexico City aged 18 while studying to enter medical school. As she recuperated from the fractures in her spine, through her thorax and pelvis, painting helped pass the time. During the more than 30 operations she endured through her life it became more than a past-time, more of a full-time calling.

Four years later, she married Rivera, 20 years her senior. He was already a heralded artist in his own right, famed for his communist political beliefs and bohemian lifestyle. Their relationship survived numerous infidelities, Kahlo’s bi-sexual affairs, poor health and inability to have a child. Their life was tormented by alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide attempts, divorce and remarriage before her premature death in 1954.

With her death and subsequent greater awareness of her art, Frida Kahlo’s memory evolved into a popular iconoclast whose struggles ring true today.

Classics class

It should come as no surprise that a Kahlo’s colourful life should inspire Marguerite Donlon, the artistic director and choreographer of the Donlon Dance Company.

The “cheeky Irish choreographer” as she was described in leading dance arts magazine Ballet-tanz, has created her own suite of reinterpreted classics throughout the first decade of this century.

The titles suggest audiences are in for something out of the ordinary. “Carmen – Private”, “Giselle: Reloaded”, and “Swan Lake – Emerged” are award-winning creations reinterpreting the original work.

Far removed from what a modern-day audience might consider “inaccessible”, her work has been acclaimed as bringing “the man on the street” back to the theatre. Critic Jochen Schmidt describes Donlon’s choreography as “the best production of Prokofiev’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ not only in years, but in decades”.

Since becoming director of the ballet at the Saarländisches Staatstheater or Saarland State Theatre in Saarbrucken, Donlon has made a mark on the German ballet and the international scene. Now with a decade behind it, her company has toured Europe, the United States, Ireland and South Korea. She has created ballet across the world.

And in her wake, she has brought no small amount of fun. Donlon integrates art installations and video into her style. It is at once innovative, striking and humorous.

In the version of “Casa Azul” destined for Macau next month, the audience can expect a recreation of Kahlo’s many faces. Budding dancers can also expect to follow in her footsteps with Donlon’s help.

Donlon will teach the steps to “Casa Azul” and students will be able to devise their own, inspired by Kahlo’s works. The Donlon Dance Workshop will be held on the afternoons of September 17 and 18 in the Macau Cultural Centre’s 2nd floor Rehearsal Room. Dancers are expected to have a minimum of three years’ training and pay a MOP250 fee. The workshop is in English. Application forms are available online at the centre’s website, www.ccm.gov.mo, and must be returned by September 7.

The less energetic might consider registering for the pre-performance talk on September 21 at the cultural centre’s conference room. The 30-minute talk, “I Paint, Therefore I Am”, is free of charge and in Cantonese only.
Register by phoning (853) 2870 0699.