Cheesnrice

Well, the show opened. I couldn't breath for a few days and just now found the space. Talk about freakin intense. It hit right when I wrote the the director's notes openning morning. The night before, the stage was taking it's final shape, I sat chilly-tired watching the boys hang the leaves, "Here? Like this?". Two men who stepped up and wanted to be more than an actor. Creators, visual artists, adding their flare to the experience, leaving their imprint. It was finally becoming their too. As all the rest did. My two teens working alongside with us as part of the company. My rumbera, a steady a growing flame. My girls, my little gems, jewels I get play beauty parlor with. The boys strut, my ladies burn. All in love and sweetness, excited. They all trusted my ship and were about to sail off with me.

When my parents left me the Perez Prado Collecion Original, I was lonely, homesick, living in Lubbock with more empty vessels than I could handle. With this music, my own well filled. Pictures, the story, the movment, the grand time, all opened to me. I was home again, somehow remembering everything. It had to be cooked at slow simmer. I had to see it someday. Then there it was, the water broke the day I saw my actors for the first rehearsal. I hadn't written it. I wrote it as we worked, watching them: dancing lessons, ensemble exercises, knowing some of them for years. I used everything I had learned up to that point and it magically all fit together.

So I sat there night before we opened, barely realizing earlier that week, my children's piece Teatro produced, was performed at the Eisenmien Center in Plano for a 8,000 kids in two days. Four of my most trusted actors and I, led by Yvonne, got to tell a story about ancient mexican gods, shapeshifters, dreams, roars, and a hero. All those kids. At that moment, Yvonne sat next to me, and we just smiled. Too numb to fit the magnitude of what we had accomplished. One last push. Clean up, go home, go to bed.

I woke up and got the notes in at the last possible second I was allowed to. I am just now swallowing.

There is something so elegant and electrifying about mambo. The music's grand landscape has always capitvated my imagintion since I saw my Mother and Father sail across a dance floor for the first time. I would learn the little steps, the hips, the feet all moving to savor a sound that was simply majestic to a young girl's mind. Seeing two people dance with such grace and pride, only love could inspire, left me with a romance to tell.

The play came on a night spent with the music. The legendary icons of the Epoca de Oro dazzled in my mind. Only latino blood can capture such a grand style of dangerous and honest intensity. It was the stuff the heart melted to; the stuff that made you stop your breath or burst into raucous laughter; the stuff that celebrated life to its fullest. The Rose Marine with it's latino history, was the perfect place to remember those days. All I had was pieces of stories, songs, and the generation's reverance for this time. The rest, as they say, was history.

Mambo inspired freedom and discovery when it arrived in Mexico. A time when Mexico was achieving progress and prosperity, modernity. The cinematic movement of the Epoca de Oro gave the people dreams, possiblities grew, a voice was heard. This tribute, inspired by my Mother and Father, is meant to recall those dreams that can hopefully claim time again now.