This trek towards research and creating
interpretation of our millenary roots, came forth from direct contact with the
Indian and peasant communities in our country and Latin America. Such an
encounter made us understand the value and importance of the mythical
countenance of our pre-Columbian origin. It had been absent as vital and
essential in the artistic experience of drama.
For thirteen years,
research, looking into millenary remembrances and undertaking a dramatic
practice led us to the creation of a new dramatic gender, the Mythical Mask
Ceremonial Theater, as a language of our own. The view of a ceremonial
aesthetics for the understanding of an invisible poetic ecstasy sprouts at the
practical foundation of the role of masks as objects laden with sacredness and
mystery. The interpretation of the Colombian pre-Columbian mask in the
ceremonial theater reinstates itself in the art of commemorating the gods of
nature, our mythical forefathers or civilizing heroes.
Reenacting
magical symbols from a creative perspective restores the passion in primeval
matter. The art of interpreting that which is ancient sets in a feeling of
imagery arising from a creative instance to lade the loose pieces of memory
that have been emptied of their significance throughout history.
On the
way, the proposition of this research and dramatic practice has shown how the
objects of magic-ritual origin of our forefathers have managed to find a
specific role in Colombian dramatic art thus, recovering its artistic value as
ceremonial objects for the sake of scenic arts in our
country.
Ceremonial Theatre, a way of life, shows how the art of
interpreting the origins leads to incorporate drama, music, ceremonial masks,
dancing, ornaments, mudras or symbolic gestures, costumes, sacred geography,
painting and poetry into mythology and pre-Columbian ritual art. The reality
of the symbolic and metaphorical elements of Indian oral art and literature
make up a poetic and spiritual legacy for the act of creation, a source that
has given fruit in virtue of a long process of artistic search, persistence,
perseverance and discipline.
We have managed to bring together those
feeble threads of the ancient tradition of the pre-Columbian mask weaving them
in an act of poetic survival on stage not allowing it to
vanish.