Finally, the time has come to talk about Ballet, Spirituality and Visual Poetry. For the simple minds out there, it is easy to succumb into the thought of ballet as an oppressive art, a racist one, an instrument of colonialism and elitism. Because my dancefilm, "A poem for Giselle, a poem for a Peasant" has provoked several debates between the BIPOC community that back then I refused to talk about because I didn't want to invest energy in justifying my work to people who are too far from my experience to understand 10% of it. And by that I mean it in this very specific way (before you judge me as arrogant):
Who else in this world is indigenous descendant of Quechua culture, is Bolivian, does Ballet professionally in Europe, is a Graphic Designer, is a woman of color, has parents who DIDN'T divorce, lived in Spain, France, Bolivia and Germany, is married to a Jewish man and speaks 4 languages?
If your experience doesn't come close to mine, there is no way on earth you can even begin to understand my vision of the world through semantics. You can only begin to understand me if you allow yourself to FEEL what my work makes you feel. That's it. But also, if you're into esoteric practices, you should know that I am a Projector in Human Design, with a 6/2 profile: the Role model, the hermit. So it is not my responsibility to be relatable. It is my responsibility to always be fair even if it means contradicting my past statements, even if it means to accept that in the past I was wrong.
The real reason I am writting about my dancefilm, is that I want to share my experience with Indigenous Ancestral medicine, how it changed my life, how reconnecting to my ancestors spiritually (AND NOT POLITICALLY) was the best desicion I ever took. By the way, my ancestors didn't want to see me poor, living under the shadow of Activism. My ancestors actually wanted me to keep dancing professionnally. IN EUROPE. Introduction now done. Let's cut the cake now. A poem for Giselle, a poem for a peasant is a dance film that took me 4 years to do. From the writting of the idea, to finding the team to work with, to the last moment of editing, it was an unexplored experience and I completely lacked the abilities to do it. In fact it took 4 years because of my amateurism in the subject haha. I practice radical self accountability, I am not afraid of accepting my weaknesses. But the main reason why it took me 4 years, was not only my lack of professional knowledge in film producing/making. It was because I was stuck in TRAUMA. This trauma was making me go forward at a glacial paste. With a lot of "going backwards" too. Still I don't regret being stuck on trauma. Because the lessons I learned during this process of getting out of it were lessons that I will definitely never forget. In fact, I will pass them to my future children (because yes, this experience changed my life so radically, that I realized that being a mother in the XXI century is the most courageous act a woman can do, and families ARE sacred. Ancestry. That's the whole purpose right?). I wrote A poem for Giselle, A poem for a Peasant because I was in desperate search to recognize my indigenous quechua grandmother who passed away almost 30 years ago. In Bolivia, there is a tendency of denying your indigenous grandmothers. This is a consequence of colonialism. A very successful one: the more you deny your indigenous descendance, the more white washed the country is, the more you contribute to racism, and the more our culture is erased. But that was my particular case because nowadays how I see Bolivia, we will never lose our indigenous heritage. In fact it just keeps getting stronger. In the search to acknowledge my grandmother who was left in oblivion, I found myself with a lot of closed doors. It seemed as if in my family, it was a forbidden thing to talk about. I needed to break that boundary because the pain I was feeling was making it impossible for me to live peacefully and enjoy the present moment. I wasn't doing anything wrong, I just wanted to know who my grand mother was. All I knew was that she lived in Macha PotosÃ, had 9 kids and was a peasant. In Bolivia 100% of peasants are indigenous. Their courage shaped our country. I wanted to make something in honor of my ancestors. I am a capricorn rising so I am quite structured and pragmatic when it comes to making art. My first question was: how can I honor my ancestors? These are the tools I have: ballet and a camera. I'll make a visual poem. Honoring someone means not to portrey that person as a victim, but still showing their struggles. To me it was important to create something that contributes to the dignity of indigenous cultures, instead of showing them as victims. My biggest example of what indigenous dignity is, is FREDDY MAMANI. He is a worldwide recognized architect, founder of the Neo Andean Style. He created his art through a lot of research about Tihuanaku and implementing Indigenous cosmology of community work. He is empathic to his workers because he knows what it is like to be from the working class. He is a true leader and a visionary. My standards of what decoloniality should be are reflected in his work: to create sacred and beautiful things through intense research and the strong will of contributing to the DIGNITY of aymara cultures, rather than victimising himself.
I have a huge respect for Freddy Mamani, he is an example to follow to any bolivian artist. I am definitely a fan of his work and vision.
So this was my standard of creating art that was not an "Ego masturbation". I will not apologize for my truck driver language. I said what I said and I stand by it. A lot of art in general is just Ego Masturbation, and it is really difficult to not do it. As artists especially in the West, we are pushed to make everything about ourselves. I wanted to avoid this, I wanted my visual poem to be FOR THE PEASANTS OF BOLIVIA, not for myself. I wanted desperately avoid my Artist Ego.
So the begining of the poem started with a clear political direction. Now the question was: how can I do that with the tools that I have? BALLET. The most "opposite" thing to indigenous cultures. But is it really opposite? A lot of pagan stories are portrayed in romantic Ballets. This was the starting point: GISELLE.
Giselle is a romantic ballet in which a german peasant, Giselle, falls in love with Albrecht, a noble man who disguises himself as a peasant so he can experience life outside the courts.
When Giselle finds out he was engaged (as royal weddings had nothing to do with love, they were mostly purposed for commerce and geopolitics), she becomes crazy and dies out of the treason (she had a heart condition, that is why the extreme feelings killed her).
In the second act, she is a GHOST: A WILLI.
Willies in European folk/pagan culture are the ghosts of Virgin women who died betrayed by their men, these ghost are trapped in our 3D dimension, they didn't trascend, so they only look for revenge: they force any man who encounters them to dance until they die. Now you can see how deep European paganism was, right? In Bolivian indigenous aymara culture, we have similarities with the Willies: EL TATA DANSANTI. The community decides who gets to wear the mask of the Tata dansanti. It usually was someone who betrayed the community or someone who offers himself as a Suyu to the Pachamama. He will then proceed to dance until he dies. Just like the Willis punish Albrecht. See? humans have more in common than what they like to admit. Love is an energy that is very difficult to understand and requires a lot of commitment to engage with. Back to Giselle synopsis: In the second act, Albrecht missed her so much, he went to the graveyard to visit her in the night. There, he was seen by Myrtha, the queen of the Willies. So she decides to punish him and make him dance until he dies. Giselle appears, and as pure as her heart, she begs Myrtha to let him go and live. Myrtha changes her mind in the end. Giselle tells Albrecht that she still loves him but he does not belong with her, he belongs with his wife, in the world of the living. So Albrecht goes back to his normal life. In theory, I wanted to do a paralel between Giselle, the German peasant, with my grandmother, the indigenous peasant. In the case of my grandmother, she died in oblivion and resentment. Her pain passed to me for a reason (scorpios tend to have karmic lives and strong connection to the underworld, mine was this one). It was such an unbeareable pain, that I decided to call my amawta and fix the situation. It was also reflecting in my Acne. I suffer from Rosacea, and back then my acne was getting only worse. It was so bad that Antibiotics were not working at all anymore. My Amawt'a proceeded then to read the Sared Coca leaf to me. He saw a great pain in my heart that needed urgently to be taken care of. We had to dig to the roots of that pain. It was my grandmother, who was caring the pain of 7 generations in her own energy. Her pain needed to be healed so I could be free. The healing process took more than one year. It was the hardest thing I ever did. But I needed to get rid of all that pain of 7 generations of ancestors in me, I could not go forward with life, I was K'encha like we say in Bolivia (bad luck, blocked abundance). And this is why these colonial pains need to be healed instead of romanticized. they put our health in danger. In the end, even though my dancefilm started from a political vision of honoring all the peasants of Bolivia, I could not help to get personnal with my grandmother's story, and it made sense that I talk about her in the movie. Just like Albrecht missed Giselle and went to the graveyard to visit her, I went to the underworld to bring back my grandmother and heal her wounds that were making me carry a burden that did not belong to me. But after all, I had to let her go, because she lives now in another dimension. And I live in this one. Recent scientific research shows that we all carry the pain of our ancestors in our DNA. This is the link to the article: https://perception.inner-growth.org/science-shows-memory-of-trauma-passing-14-generations/ So in the end I rescued my grandmother and healed her pain. You can laugh all you want, but it has had consequences in all my family members. My grandmother now visits my cousins and uncles in their dreams with no repercution. Because before I healed her, whenever she would visit my family members in their dreams, she would bring bad luck and something tragic would happen: someone would die or suffer a big accident. My grandmother was carrying a lot of darkness with her in the underworld. But now she visits everyone with no negative consequence. I only know this now. After one year and a half of intense spiritual work. I didn't realize how impactful my healing process could be. My skin is getting better, with still some healing to do. I found my grandmother through Astral Projections in the underworld. I developped my psychic abilities so intensely that I enhanced my manifestation powers. Without money I manifested my biggest dream: going to Russia. My ancestors are now with me, and they forced me back into ballet. I was tired of ballet, I didn't want to do it anymore. But they won't take no for an answer. So I have no choice but to keep committing to my karmic duty. And my karmic duty is still not over, I still need to put the last pieces of the puzzle together with the new visual poem I am writing.
When you decide to open yourself to indigenous Andean Ancestral medicine, you are signing a contract of commitment. A commitment with THE HARDEST SHADOW WORK YOU WILL EVER EXPERIENCE IN YOUR LIFE. Ancestral medicine forces you to confront your biggest shadows, those that are burried in your subconscious, those you cannot heal with Palo Santo and crystals.
You will soon be able to see my dancefilm, I will be posting about it occasionally. I hope that when you watch it, you allow yourself to feel it. PS: a hinch of the new Visual Poem that I am writting: Vaslav Nijinsky in his diaries talks about FEELING, and how this is much more important than words. My new premise: to understand love, one cannot rely on semantics nor the spoken language. Nijinsky knew better than us. We were too unfair to him.
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