FRONTERAS

4 MONTHS OF CREATION, REFLECTION,
LISTENING, AND LEARNING
culminating in the world premiere of TWO full-length pieces

¿Que debemos a nuestros vecinos?
Si hay una pared, ¿habrá una puerta?

As a company, Almanac has always sought to break down barriers between genres in the performance world, learning from difference. We turn our focus to the boundaries that separate us from each other. We spend this time thinking, creating, and learning from friends new and old.

Our friend and collaborator, the Mexican performer/choreographer/designer/clown Emmanuel Becerra, as well as Almanac company members from across the United States, gathered in 2017 to collectively conduct and publicly offer free public performances, workshops, community events, and open process sharings throughout Philadelphia. After four months of community, collaboration, and research, two full-length productions emerged:

FRONTERAS: An Homage to Whatshername precariously balances celebration of feminine stamina with resistance to the binary that frames feminine strength as extraordinary in the first place. How you get here is entirely the point. Because she wasn’t expected to build a door with the bricks of the patriarchy, but she did. What if men didn’t talk all the time and require their opinions to be validated as universal truths? Maybe we could all sleep better.

FRONTERAS: A Door in the Desert is an acrobatic journey through transcendence and back, earnestly questioning why we divide and label ourselves.
How you get here isn’t the point. Unlock the door, and for a moment you and it are one, fused together in a non-social space with some cows around. You tumble past cactuses. Unfamiliar faces greet you, but their unknown language is not an obstacle. Not all who are lost wander. Not all who are tired sleep.

Abstract shapes made of human bodies, movement that twists the rules of what is possible and what is expected. Circus mats fall like big walls on top of people. Fronteras physicalizes the identities we build for ourselves and the layers upon layers of beliefs and ideas. What does it take to tear down our own walls?