Opus Number: 127
Music: Ariel Guzik, Silvestre Revueltas, Margarita Lecuona, Robert Gómez Bolaños, Severiano Briseño
Set and Costumes: Santo Loquasto
Lighting: Jennifer Tipton
Date First Performed: November 2, 2007
Notes: De Sueños (of dreams) and De Sueños que se Repiten (of recurring dreams) are surrealistic dreamscapes that take place on the Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday combining aspects of Catholic theology and Aztec culture when deceased relatives are honored. A series of images reference such aspects of Mexican culture as the Virgin of Guadalupe, hat dance and deer dance. The music of several contemporary Mexican composers, as well as elaborate sets and lighting, intensify the cinematic, other-worldly quality of the dances. The two works may be presented together or separately and in either order.
“Fabulous new works… For all their turbulence and the occasional human sacrifice, these Mexican dreamscapes are refuges, places where death sentences are commuted, where people dodge machete blows through magical substitutions, and the action may roll backward. These destinations are different from, but perhaps as comforting as, the “monuments of unaging intellect” in which Yeats sought consolation. [They] offer the youthful pleasures of comedy, strength and sensuality.” – Robert Johnson, Star-Ledger
Amy Young, Richard Chen See, and Company, photo by Paul B. Goode
