FLEXIBLE FLYERS Members of Delfos look awesome in a photo shoot with famous dance
Photograph: Lois Greenfield
“Mexican culture is not just about feathers and donkeys,” says Claudia Lavista, cofounder of Delfos Danza Contemporánea. “Contemporary Mexican culture is much more wide and complicated and deep—and I’m very happy to be part of that movement.” Lavista doesn’t mean to speak literally, but her choice of the word movement is apropos: She’s been an important contributor to the evolution and development of Mexican bodies in motion for the last two decades.
As the daughter of a filmmaker and composer, Lavista grew up among artists articulating the sounds and images of contemporary Mexico. She was an avid cello student—but she wasn’t inspired to dance until a high-school friend dragged her to a class with Federico Castro, resident choreographer for Ballet Nacionál de Mexico and an important teacher to many Mexican artists.
“I love my friend for that [helping me find my calling],” Lavista says. “In that first class, I felt like a fish who just got back in the water again. It was bizarre, weird… I had to keep going. I told my father I wasn’t playing cello anymore, I was going to dance.” Lavista eventually got a job in Venezuela with Danzahoy, founded in 1980 and considered one of the pioneering modern dance companies in South America.
While with Danzahoy, Lavista met fellow dancer and Mexican compatriot Victor Manuel Ruiz. “We wanted to come back [to Mexico City] and start our own company,” Lavista says. “We were crazy. We had nothing.” She says that finding financial support continues to be a challenge. “We’re always in trouble with money. You feel like a salmon, always swimming upstream,” she laughs, adding, “Sometimes I wonder, Why can’t I be a normal person with a regular life?”
Propelled by their desire to firmly establish contemporary dance in Mexico City, Lavista and Ruiz formed a company called Delfos in 1992. Six years later, Delfos moved to Mazatlán and started a major training program for young dancers, the Mazatlán Professional School of Dance. Delfos has since become an information center for cultural promoters, helping to develop more opportunities for touring, creation and performance of regional dance.
Although Mexican dance draws on a deep folkloric tradition and retains an influence of Spanish-style classical ballet, 20th-century dance-art in Mexico was heavily influenced by Americans. “In the very beginning, there was a huge influence of [Martha] Graham technique,” Lavista says. A Texan woman who went by the single name Waldeen also brought modern dance to Mexico in the 1930s and started an influential school. New York–based modern dance pioneer Anna Sokolow also made a mark.
The 1980s were an important decade as well: At that time, Lavista says German-style dance-theater “was a big influence [on new choreography].” And in the late ’80s, New York–style postmodernism came to Mexico City with artists like Ralph Lemon and Jeremy Nelson, who toured there to teach and perform. But Americans weren’t the only ones to pollinate Mexican dance artists with new ideas: Seminal Japanese dancer-choreographer Natsu Nakajima “led the first Butoh workshop in Mexico,” Lavista says.
“In the last 10 to 15 years, Mexican dance is traveling more to Europe, Africa and China,” says Lavista, explaining that while Mexican artists have a certain point of view, the sharing and exchange that arises through touring has led to a proliferation of styles and approaches. “Mexican dance is very expressive,” she says. “We don’t have a lot of abstractions, like Merce Cunningham. We as a culture are very emotional. But it’s a little dangerous to say that; we are part of a global culture.”
Delfos Danza Contemporánea makes its Chicago premiere at the Dance Center on Thursday 2.