❁Dia de los Muertos ~ Dancers❁

In my last post I said I would share how Dia de los Muertos became an important holiday for me. In 2006 I stage managed for a play called “The Pain of the Macho” it is written by a prominent Hispanic author /actor named Rick Najera. One of the main focal points of this particular play is the Dia de los Muertos Alter that is mentioned in the monologues. It was then I began to research Dia de los Muertos and truly come to understand it’s meaning. The Pain of the Macho is a series of monologues that touch on what it means to be Hispanic in this day and age, the difficulties of trying to hold on to our culture while we’ve have quite effectively been Americanized and the difficulties our ancestors went though in their quest for The American Dream, which is an idealism that to this day we struggle to achieve. In the opening monologue Rick says, “This alter is here to help me remember, because the most fragile thing in the world is a memory.” I was extremely lucky that Rick was in attendance on opening night; it was such an honor to meet the man who created this touching work, more importantly he told me, “Write, write anything but write, write about your family and what it means to you to be Hispanic. We are in an ever changing world and much has changed for us in recent decades; record your experiences because you are not alone in the way you feel.” He also advised me to always stay in touch with your creativity and continue to grow and improve upon your talents. Thank you Rick, for changing the way I look and remember the world, thank you for making me want to push myself to new heights but most importantly thank you for your artistic contributions, you paint a picture with words that my heart sees with crystal clarity.
The following pictures are of the Urban 15 dancers, the entered the building at night to ominous sounding drums, their movement flowing with the rhythms, the LED lights in their costume making their Sugar Skull faces glow eerily. Once inside the room with the alters they erupted into flurried movements that seem driven solely by the music. The sounds of the drums created an infectious groove that many of the audience could not resist as they began to join the dancers with reckless abandonment. It truly was an awesome celebration of life, kudos to Urban 15 for their performance that night.
The Dance Begins












This trilogy of posts are dedicated to the memory of my grandparents; thank you for everything you endured so that I could have a better life, thank you also for the wonderful talents and memories you have passed on to me, thank you most of all for loving me as much as you did and teaching me the importance and power of both laughter and love.