Posted March 28, 2024
Su Teatro presents a month of programming April 4-7, focused around 2 annual festivals. The 25th Annual Xicano Independent Film Festival features the best of Latino World Cinema. This year the focus will highlight Chicano independent films and filmmakers. Films included will be A Little Family Drama and will welcome featured actress Alma Martinez; Divorce Bait with special guests include director Patrick Pérez and lead actress Vanessa Vasquez. The festival will also pay tribute to local filmmakers as well in collaboration with CineFe and the Colorado Humanities.
The XIFF created by Angela Manzanares, and continued by Daniel Salazar has been the premier Latino film festival in the region for the last 26 years. It has been instrumental in promoting and supporting Chicano/Latinx film and filmmakers and has hosted talent such as Benjamin Bratt, Pepe Serna, Miriam Colón and Esai Morales. See XicanIndie schedule at www.suteatro.org.
WordFest
Su Teatro’s Festival Month will continue with the 10th Annual WordFest “Everything Dedicated to the Word” featuring guest artists and rehearsed play readings.
Guest artists include: Safos Dance Theater, April 19th & 20th, 7pm, Safos Dance Theater will be performing Stories from Home, based on stories by Choreographer/Director Yvonne Montoya, who chronicles her family’s journey from New México to Arizona.
The work explores how geographies, languages, and stories among Latinx and border communities have shared histories and experiences. Stories from Home is a series of dances embodying oral traditions of Latinx communities in the American Southwest. Choreographer Yvonne Montoya and an all-Latinx cast of dancers draw upon personal histories and ancestral knowledge, including stories from Montoya’s family members. Montoya, a 23rd-generation Nuevomexicana, began to develop Stories from Home after her father’s passing in 2015; compelled to continue his storytelling tradition for her own child, she turned to dance. Stories From Home is a vessel for personal and specific tales. The work explores how geographies, languages, and stories among Latinx and border communities have shared histories and experiences. Stories from Home was commissioned by Su Teatro and Gala Hispanic Theater (Washington D.C) and co-funded by the National Performance Network.
Vanessa Sánchez y La Mezcla, Ghostly Labor, April 26th & 27th at 7pm, the nationally renowned dance company Vanessa Sánchez y La Mezcla present Ghostly Labor. Ghostly Labor is a multidisciplinary dance performance documenting histories of profiteering and exploitation of female labor in the US–Mexico borderlands through percussion, video, tap dance, zapateado jarocho, and Afro-Caribbean dance. Director and Choreographer Vanessa Sanchez will partner with labor organizations to conduct interviews, collaborate with Son Jarocho musician Laura Rebolloso (Veracruz, MX), and work with animator John Jota Leaños (San Francisco). Performed by Sanchez’s company La Mezcla, this new dance-theater performance brings together percussive dance forms, an original musical score, and animated archival footage to illuminate the resilience, beauty, and strength of borderlands womxn at work. Ghostly Labor was commissioned by Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana (MACLA; San Jose, CA), Su Teatro (Denver, CO), The Yard (Chilmark, MA), and Pregones/PRTT (Bronx, NY) and co-funded by the National Performance Network.
Both productions will take place at Cleo Parker Robinson Dance 119 Park Avenue West in a joint collaboration with CPRD.
Rehearsed Play Readings
Su Teatro will also present a series of rehearsed play readings. The first is- How to Remain A Humanist after a Massacre in 17 Steps directed by Ami Dayan. The reading with a post-performance panel is offers “an instruction guide on the inner struggle, after a massacre between the human voice calling for revenge and the safety of your children and the voice of reason reminding you that all mothers want the same thing.” Three Mothers” a new play by Su Teatro company member David Carrasco. Former University of Colorado professor Dr. Albert Ramirez presents “A Revolutionary Act” is a fictional play, inspired by a true but yet unfinished story. The truth has yet to be revealed concerning the deaths of Los Seis de Boulder.” The play with music will be presented in Denver and Boulder. Dr. Ramírez was a faculty member at the time of the tragic bombings that killed 6 Chicano activist in 1974. The scheduled for the readings is yet to be determined. But will be available on the Su Teatro website at www.suteatro.org or call (303) 296-0219.
