Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 3/29/2021
HOLYOKE – Dancer and performance artist, Michelle Marroquin, has found a new way to share her craft, which will soon be revealed in a virtual event at the Wistariahurst Museum in Holyoke.
The Easthampton resident said after the stay at home order was issued by Governor Charlie Baker last year, she and her creative partner and husband, Tony Silva, were forced to find new ways to share their art. “We are performing artists that had to adapt to not having performance opportunities,” she said.
She said Silva began performing live concerts via Facebook Live and through the website Patreon, while she began teaching online. However, when she wasn’t teaching, she said she was “dreaming about how to film these solos I’ve choreographed.”
“So I can’t perform live, [but] I want to capture these dances on film,” she said. Marroquin said she began to think about the setting of each of the dances. As this began, she said she and Silva learned new skills such as directing and editing the filming.
“We’re learning how to make films, we’re performers, but learning how to direct someone behind the camera and tell them what we want,” she said. “Tony puts it together in his sound room and video editing, he’s learning how to do that.”
Their newest collaboration and the focus of the event, she said, is called “Volver a los 17, a Bilingual Dance Film.” She explained, “This was a piece of choreography that started at the beginning of the pandemic, [and] slowly over the summer solidified.” When she began to think about where the dance should be filmed it was winter and too cold to film outside like she had with her other pieces. That, she said, was when she remembered the Holyoke City Hall Ballroom.
“I had been to the Holyoke City Hall Ballroom. It’s this beautiful open space with stained glass windows. I thought who knows if they’ll let me [use it],” she said. “The mayor’s office was really gracious and it was the perfect time to do it because it wasn’t being used for anything else. We followed protocols and gave them a list of people for contact tracing.”
The title of the film, Marroquin said, reflects the use of a well-known song, “Volver a los 17” by Violeta Parra, which is in Spanish. “The song is really the cornerstone, or the keystone of the whole piece, and there’s a lot of poetic lyrics in Spanish,” she said.
She said for those who don’t speak Spanish, she’s tried to communicate the lyrics both in her dance movements, but also through the film. “What I intend to do is try to express some of them through my body language, obviously that’s abstract and its own language. I tried to add translation to some of the lyrics to the film, little phrases, poetic phrases,” she said. “Just enough to give people a clue as to what the themes are in this poem/song.”
The piece, she said, is centered on her feelings about having lived in Mexico until she was 19 and then moving to the U.S. “There’s sort of a before and after, as you begin to live your life here, you have a relationship with your past. It can be nostalgic in a form of grief, I spent a lot of my 20s and 30s in that state,” she said. “When you have the choice and the ability to come back and forth, you make a choice to stay here and you intentionally live your life where you are and the people you’re with and you make this your new home if you choose to.”
She said this leads to an identity struggle and reflection. “This leads to the issue of identify, who you are and what your relationship is with the place you live and the place you grew up,” she said.
The event, which will be hosted virtually both through the Wistariahurst Museum and at Holyoke Community College, will take place on April 7. The event at HCC will take place first from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. and the Wistariahurst event will be held from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Marroquin said following the showing of the film, which will take place via Zoom, participants will be given prompts, divided into breakout groups and will have a short amount of time to discuss the prompt.
She said there was room to accommodate a significant number of people who wanted to attend the event. While the event is free, there is a suggested donation through Marroquin’s website. Tickets along with more information about the event can be found online at http://www.michellemarroquin.com/classes/artisttalk/.