Hermanas Brujas

Hermanas Brujas was raw. Not the type that feels unfinished, but the type of raw that’s strong and natural and reminds you of your own primitive humanity. Puerto Rican choreographer, Kiani del Valle, her KDV dance ensemble, and acclaimed Dominican sound artist, Kelman Duran, delivered a fully immersive performance. And dropped the audience right into another world: the Americas after European colonisation. It was a time when French, American and Spanish arrivals merged Catholicism with Indigenous spirituality. It made way for Voodoo religion and Santeria beliefs. Commissioned for the Radical Sounds Latin America Festival, the performance explored these concepts while honing in on communal female mysticism. Most importantly, it’s a study of the history of beliefs and del Valle created her own performative ritual, a contemporary version celebrating the wild and powerful female archetype.

On the night of November 18, an intimate crowd gathered at the Silent Green Kulturquartier in Wedding. The former crematorium was a fitting backdrop for a festival that explores wounds, healings and new beginnings. We descended a concrete ramp, washed in coloured lights to enter the exhibition. Above the entrance, was a portrait of female bodies softly heaped into each other. It signalled that we’d been invited into a world, driven to consider a different perspective, and the communities who have experienced (and continue to live) the realities of this perspective.

It was midnight when we were called to the auditorium. Fitting, for a performance highlighting the mysticism of spirituality and ritualistic practices. We arranged ourselves on seats around a performance circle, on the same level as the dancers and Kelman Duran’s live sound production. The intimate nature of the performance was part of its power. We were not voyeurs of the spectacle, we were part of it. Smoke, dim blue lighting, and an ambient soundscape created an other-worldly opening while five women entered the circle at different points from behind the audience. As if they were drawing a line from the five points of a Pentagram. The pointed star that commonly symbolises protection against evil and exorcism, driving away unwanted energies. It also features heavily on the North American and European Union flags.

Over the course of 45 minutes, we saw a marked duality between frantic, jagged movements and strong, grounded and flowing motions. The Hermanas Brujas, or Witch Sisters as it’s translated, are wild and untamed. Their long hairstyles are a well-documented symbol of femininity. But, they were teased into a chaos of matted knots. Each dancer was dressed in her own all-white outfit, symbolic of purity and placing the women in two worlds at the same time. Lace pants and wrist cuffs offered an old-word Sorceress vibe, while frayed-edge denim and string-wrapped pants were decidedly modern styled by Angus Green.

Despite the outfits, del Valle put the female form front and centre. As the performance unfolded the women had their own ‘Free The Nipple’ movement and removed their tops. Each dancer displayed her strength by embodying what seemed to be a spiritual and animalistic quality. There was a sense that each woman flipped between states of despair and ecstasy as she found that power. The despair was highlighted particularly at a point when each performer tethered herself to a long white string and offered the other end of it to a member of the audience. The dancer who came to us instructed: “Don’t let go”, as if we were also invited into her community.

What’s clear is that throughout the performance, the dancers shared a communal heightened awareness of each other. This was shown through the strong and abrupt choreography that saw the bodies often intertwined with each other, grounded in a lot of floorwork. Percussive music with wide stances and bent legs intertwined with each other. In the performance, there were moments that highlighted the individuality and unity of the women. They seemed to stay in sync with each other which allowed us to feel engaged with the communal presence and quality of movement.

The choreography aligned with del Valle’s intention to drive home universally-relatable themes: birth, death, and sexuality. We saw them woven through in performative and atmospheric ways. There was the bowl of water that the dancers dripped onto each others’ stomachs, no doubt symbolic of life itself. A female Spanish voiceover drove one of the most illustrative moments of the performance. One that asserted an unwavering groundedness and sense of self. The voiceover included two texts back-to-back that included a ritual mantra written by del Valle herself, and a poem by Latin American writer, Eduardo Galeano. Del Valle’s mantra, ‘I Declare and I Affirm’, opened the section with the line:  “I release all the energies that vibrate lower than love. May all negativity be removed from my threefold being, Body-Soul-Spirit, May my paths be freed from all unhealthy attachments”. Meanwhile the closing line from Galeano’s poem declared: “Little Death, they call it; but great, very great it must be, if by killing us gives birth to us.”

Throughout the performance, the dancers themselves added to the sonic atmosphere as their screams and groans often punctuated the air while they danced. Those ideas of birth, death, and sexuality rang true as it was often hard to tell whether they were pained, in erotic pleasure, or giving birth. Kelman Duran emphasised the choreography with a score ranging from ambient soundscapes and Latin American percussion, to the din of insects and animals in the belly of the jungle. His performance alone was enough to maintain the audience’s attention.

The idea of the free woman and, perhaps, the power of a woman’s body is steeped in mysticism. It ranges from the “Earth Mother” Pachamama goddess of the Indigenous Andes, to the Wild Woman archetype told through stories like Pocahontas and Kirikou and the Sorceress. The complexities of life given through a female body begs eternal curiosity. Kiani del Valle and her Hermanas Brujas not only invited us into their world, but captivated us in their ritual where the women embodied and took ownership of their power. In the closing moments, each woman took her place back at those five points on the perimeter of the circle. In unison, they all performed a headstand, naked. Like I said, it was raw.

HERMANAS BRUJAS
Direction & Concept: Kiani del Valle
Sound: Kelman Duran
Creative Production: Elizabeth Hinojos 
Choreography: Kiani del Valle in collaboration with performers Annalise Van Even, Shannon Leypoldt, Dana Pajarillaga, Dafni Krazoudi and Alison Adnet
Styling: Angus Green
Costume Designer: Calissa Teiniker
Hair: Kosuke Ikeuchi
Makeup: Anri Omori
Set Design: Michael Naughton
Photography: Rita Cuoto