“Can you speak a little louder? I can’t hear you very well,” choreographer Miguel Azcue says apologetically, at the start of our interview. “Usually it’s pretty bad, the connection with Cuba.”
We’ve rung Azcue at his mother’s house in Havana to talk about his compelling, dream-like double-bill, Crisálida/Possible Impossible, making its Canadian premiere at the Vancouver International Dance Festival this Friday. But while Azcue is technically surrounded by the comforts of home, he is far from where he lives and works as artistic director at the Memory Wax dance company in Malmö, Sweden.
The two works, both choreographed by Azcue, are the result of a four-year cultural exchange project between Memory Wax and Cuba’s Danza Teatro Retazos, which Azcue co-founded in 1987. Crisálida is a 40-minute work of whimsy that follows eight world-class Cuban dancers through everyday life scenes, enhanced by an otherworldly dream sequence as well as elements of pantomime, hip-hop, and folklore. Meanwhile, Possible Impossible was created to celebrate Memory Wax’s 10-year anniversary and long-time partnership with Retazos, and features seven Retazos performers in a rhythmic, 50-minute multimedia spectacle, where the known laws of time, space, and power cease to exist.
It all makes for a fascinating cross-continental hybrid and we had to know more about how Azcue unites his ideas between cultures.
Over fizzy connections and crackling lines, this is what emerged. Answers have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
KK: From what I've seen, the two pieces, Crisálida and Possible Impossible, appear very different. Are they connected thematically at all?
MA: I think they are quite different, but there are some things that are in both pieces. Everybody sees something different, but I have the feeling there is a sense of longing for somebody or something in both pieces. Like, trying to belong to a group. Crisálida is a little bit lighter, in a way, and has some humour. And the other one is more magical, like poetry and images, pictures. It is very graphic, in a way.
KK: Explain the choice to use masks in Crisálida?
MA: We were looking at the idea of identity, and realized it’s a very vast subject, so we just chose some angles that related to us. How we sometimes play roles and need to transform ourselves, and how sometimes the roles that we play are not big enough to hold our own being, somehow. So the masks are just a tool; how do we express this? And that was a good, simple way to do it: I have a mask, can I try to be someone else? There is something real about you trying to be a lion. It’s not that we just dance the lion – there is something about you, when you try to do it, that is who you are, as well. Everybody could do it behind a mask, but everybody would do it differently, so there is something that is you, even though you have a mask.
KK: We don’t get many chances to see companies from Cuba OR Sweden in Vancouver. Do the pieces contain stylistic elements or ideas that are representative of either culture?
MA: In Crisálida, definitely. We have worked a lot with the Afro-Cuban culture, and there is a singer as well that sings some spiritual songs from the Yoruba religion, like a prayer, so that’s very much based on the Afro-Cuban culture and religion. And it’s also mixed with a bit of the pantomime as well, so you have totally another point, like a story somehow. We go through this vitality of this African religion, going into something a bit darker and mysterious and doll-like. And the other piece, Possible Impossible, doesn’t have that influence, but there’s more technique involved somehow. And that’s something that’s definitely more available in Europe, since we have access to all this new technology. Well, it’s not so new, but for Cuba it’s quite new.
KK: And what brought you to Sweden. Why did you change countries?
MA: That was a pure chance, but at the same time I think it was meant to be. First I got an invitation to be in a festival in the US, the American Dance Festival – they had a little section for international choreographers and I was there with a company I had in Ecuador. Then one of the dancers there was from a company called Carte Blanche in Norway, and she talked to them about me and they offered me a job as a dancer there. I went for six months and finished my job there and forgot all about it. But when I finished school [Azcue has his MFA in modern dance from the University of Utah] they called me again to see if I wanted to go back to Norway one more time. So I went back to Scandinavia and started to know a lot of choreographers and, when I quit Carte Blanche, I had so many other jobs that it was natural to stay there.
Same with choreography, when I didn’t want to dance anymore. And then I had a son, so I’m connected with family now as well.
KK: How much time out of the year do you spend in Cuba? How do you divide your time?
MA: I would say I spend three to four months of the year in Cuba, but not in a row. Like, right now, because we’re rehearsing I’m here for two weeks preparing for the tour to Vancouver.
KK: Kind of an obvious one, but is dance a large part of the Cuban culture?
MA: Very much so. It’s like music, it’s a very musical culture and you hear music every day all the time, and everybody dances. Much more than in Sweden. In Sweden it’s not so in the everyday life. There is dance and there is great dance, but it’s often very young people that go to the disco. Here it’s all ages – very old people, all generations.
And also the way people express themselves, they move so much more, they use their hands, their arms. It’s very physical. The spoken language is always together with physicality. In Europe, Italy is a bit like that. [Laughs]
KK: What are some of the challenges of executing a cross-cultural collaboration of this scale?
MA: Communication is a big challenge, especially because Internet [in Cuba] is not the best. It’s very slow, so certain information we just can’t share it in the same way that we do in any other country. The language and cultural differences, also. Even the sense of time for people in Sweden is different than the sense of time for people in Cuba, in terms of punctuality.
But challenges can sometimes be an inspiration for solving problems another way, so we don’t see them as negative things, and many times they bring good things. Like, in Cuba, you cannot take things for granted, and finding very simple things, like finding nails to put a table together, can be very difficult. So you can maybe come up with a solution that is so creative that you use it in many other ways.
KK: Do you have a signature you apply to all your work?
MA: Oh, that’s a difficult one to describe about yourself. I can say that I am interested in creating some structure of characters that is half fiction, depending on the performer. The performer can wear a mask that is just a way to put himself or herself into it. So for now, I do like characters and some sort of narrative, or piece of theatre. It’s not very abstract. It might change later on, but right now I do enjoy having characters that the dancers feel they can fill up.
I think we also ask ourselves, ‘Why are we doing this? Is this really necessary?’ a lot. Simplicity is important – that whatever we use, we need it to be there, whether it’s a table or or a frame, so that as things come together they belong somehow.
What is very special with this group, though, is everybody is very focused and very tuned. You don’t have to explain too much, and that’s wonderful. It’s very inspiring.
• Crisálida/Possible Impossible runs March 11-12 at the Vancouver Playhouse. Tickets from $40; VIDF.ca.
