2024 Festival Archive: La Liga Teatro Elástico
La Liga Teatro Elástico: The Beast Dance (or The Secret Spell of the Wild)
January 20, 2024
National Museum of Mexican Art
Presented by The National Museum of Mexican Art and Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival
Scholarship and Resources
Las Bestias Danzan: Heeding the Spell of the Wild
An Essay by Ana Díaz Barriga
It all started with an invocation. In the auditorium of the National Museum of Mexican Art on the morning of January 20, the puppeteers from La Liga-Teatro Elástico stood by what looked like altars with parts of wolf-puppet bodies placed on them. The audience faced them, completing a circle, as the puppeteers sang. The song brought the wolf puppets into being, as the puppeteers performed a ritual, putting the parts of the wolves together before our eyes. As they did so, they sang songs of animals digging their roots into the earth and combining to form new beings. Their lyrics introduced us to the Wolf Mother—mother of all creatures. The puppeteers lifted the heads of the wolves from the altars and invited audience members to don them, placing them over their heads. These spectators were encouraged to move as the gray Mexican wolf would. While the ritual explicitly turned these participants into wolves, it invited us all to embrace the wildness within, join the pack, and embark on a journey. La Liga’s puppeteers activated the puppets in such a way that they activated the audience as well. Spectators, hesitant at first, howled as wolves as they stepped outside of the auditorium and into the cold Chicago winter.
The wolves, also designed by La Liga, are beasts worthy to behold. The wood, leather, and crocheted yarn that make up their bodies highlight the fact that they are not real wolves; the sophisticated craft of their construction shines through their materiality. Yet, they embody the essence of the wolves as they float, larger than life-sized, above their puppeteers. As co-directors Jacqueline Serafín and Iker Vicente explained during the Van Volkenburg Symposium focused on materials at the festival, La Liga seeks to give new lives to the materials they are using: The leather, that once belonged to a goat or a cow, acquires a new life as part of a puppet animal. The puppeteers see this as a collaboration with the materials, turning them into artistic co-creators and transcending Western conceptions of the hierarchization of life-forms. In their use of traditional Mexican music coupled with the relationship they build with materials, La Liga embodies common elements of the world vision of indigenous Mexican groups—one that establishes a relationship with the environment in which animals, plants, and natural elements exist on the same hierarchical level as humans (Filgueiras Nodar, 2016: 147). As philosopher José María Filgueiras Nodar argues, the experience of Indigenous groups living in harmony with the environment establishes them as teachers for a sustainable engagement with nature (2016: 152). In their use of puppets, La Liga transmits this knowledge through a lived sense of an anti-hierarchical human relationship with the environment.
Las Bestias Danzan invites all spectators to actively acknowledge their place in that relationship. In its unique construction, each wolf was an individual, with a particular personality and role within the pack. They were each accompanied by a group of other wolves—children wearing headdresses they had created before the performance began. Various kinds of birds built by workshop participants accompanied the procession, as did a deer that soon took the lead and was followed by the hunting wolves. The wolves frolicked and jumped. They approached audience members, generating what Serafín and Vicente call a “triangle” between puppet, puppeteer, and audience. The spectators’ interaction with the puppets in the presence of the visible puppeteers allowed the puppeteers to respond and incorporate the audience as additional collaborators. The assemblage of materials and puppeteers expanded to include the audience as co-creators, welcoming them into the antihierarchical structure prompted by the performance. If anyone was not convinced they were a part of the pack before this, taking part in the wolves’ playful hunt ensured they were.
We followed the wolves back into the auditorium, chasing the scent of the deer. The audience members encircled the wolves, who in turn encircled the deer. The deer had accompanied the parade and was an individual of its own, mocking the wolves every time they failed in their endeavor to attack it. Although it was hard to watch the deer under attack, hunting the deer made the wolves’ lives a celebration—it was a celebration of their camaraderie and their ability to work together. It was also a celebration of the collaboration of the materials with the puppeteers, of the puppeteers with the audience, and of the possibility for humans to collaborate with the environment. When the deer was taken down, a child carried by Serafín took its heart. The deer’s heart opened to reveal red rose petals that the child sprinkled over everyone present. The band that accompanied this ritual began to play an instrumental version of “Dios Nunca Muere” (“God Never Dies”). Written by musician Macedonio Alcalá, this unofficial anthem of Oaxaca speaks of the life that lies beyond death, where all inevitably go (Dirección de Difusión y Relaciones Públicas, 2019). “Todo aquel que llega a morir empieza a vivir una eternidad,”¹ Alcalá wrote. Thus, the deer came back to life, now able to join a choreographed dance with the wolves and birds: a final celebration of the community that puppeteers, puppets, and audience members formed that Saturday afternoon.
¹ “Whoever reaches death begins an eternal life.” Translated by the author.
Works Cited
Dirección de Difusión y Relaciones Públicas (2019) El vals Dios nunca muere, considerado el himno no oficial de Oaxaca, vigente a 150 años de ausencia de Macedonio Alcalá. INBAL – Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura. Available at: https://www.inba.gob.mx/prensa/12860/el-vals-dios-nunca-muere-considerado-el-himno-no-oficial-de-oaxaca-vigente-a-150-anos-de-ausencia-de-macedonio-alcala. Accessed February 27, 2024.
The Ellen Van Volkenburg Puppetry Symposium Artist Panel 2: Materials (2024) January 21. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61qx2sNNfxY. Accessed February 27, 2024.
Filgueiras Nodar, J. M. (2016) La diversidad cultural oaxaqueña a la luz de la ética ambiental. LiminaR Estudios Sociales y Humanísticos, 14 (1), 144–155.
Jacqueline Serafín & Iker Vicente at the Ellen Van Volkenburg Symposium
On Sunday, January 21st, Jacqueline Serafín & Iker Vicente were speakers at The Ellen Van Volkenburg Puppetry Symposium session entitled “Panel 2 – Materials.”
The event was presented by the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival and sponsored by UNIMA-USA, moderated by Dasia N. Posner, and held online through Howlround.
Panel 2 – Materials explores the question: What tells the story? How does the performance start with the selection of materials chosen for the puppet and set fabrication?
Festival Performances
About the Performance
January 20, 2024
National Museum of Mexican Art
1852 W. 19th St.
La Liga Teatro Elástico celebrates the important role of the wildest predators within our natural ecosystem using spectacle and community interaction in reverence to the wolf with The Beast Dance (or The Secret Spell of the Wild). This spectacle revives the ancient dance of the hunter and the prey to the rhythm of festive traditional sounds. Workshop participants young and old who have spent the prior week building puppet-beasts will assemble the production right in front of the audience and then release it into the public space. It’s been performed more than 50 times in streets, squares and parks on three continents, where people have participated to the rhythm of Oaxacan sones, Basque trikitritxas or Otomi tunditos on beaches, mountains, semi-deserts or snow. Now Chicago will take its turn continuing to evolve and enrich this community spectacle featuring the live band, Los Héroes del Desfierro.
Reviews + Interviews
How the Wolf Survives, by Crystal Paul in American Theatre
Sixth Chicago Puppet Festival astonishes and delights, by Angela Allyn in Chicago Stage and Screen
Who It’s All For, by Rob Weinert-Kendt in American Theatre Magazine