Requiem Para un Alcaravan: a moxy muxe at the RUTAS Festival
28 Sep 2018.

by Drew Rowsome -

Lukas Avendano is a muxe performance artist who is gracing the RUTAS Festival with Réquiem Para un Alcaraván. 'Muxe" is similar to the concept of two-spirited and applies to men who live their lives as a third gender. Unique to the Zapotec communities of the Oaxaca region of Mexico, the label 'muxe' can refer to what we label transvestites, transgender or gay. Like all queer minorities, muxes are simultaneously considered to be good luck and also considered to be deviants.

Avendano's Réquiem Para un Alcaraván takes the lithe dancer/performer through the traditional female Zapotec rites of passage including a traditional wedding and mourning.The Réquiem climaxes when "the dancer´s soul is reincarnated as a local bird called the stone-curlew whose mating ritual sometimes concludes with the sacrifice of the male." Avendando calls their work an exploration of "veiled social acceptance" while also being "a celebration of what is still considered a transgression."

That dichotomy/duality, so familiar to queers, is challenge to the "view of a gay-friendly indigenous culture and point towards the existence of lives that negotiate pain and loneliness with self-affirming pride." Unspoken in the press materials but obvious in the photographs is that Avendano also makes use of fabulous costumes and their equally fabulous sensuality.

The RUTAS Festival is curated to "connect the Americas through the Arts" and there are performances of all disciplines, concerts, film screenings, workshops, free late night cabarets, art exhibits and many opportunities for the artists, and the audiences, to interact. (As an extra enticement, every ticket purchased enters the purchaser into a draw for a three night stay in Puerto Vallarta . . .)

The number of performances is dazzling with a few, in addition to Réquiem Para un Alcaraván, having a personal appeal. The Only Thing a Great Actress Needs is a Great Work and the Will to Succeed is an intimate riff on Jean Genet's queer classic The Maids, while famed dancer Wilson Pico utilizes drag and a Philip Glass score in Los Materiales de la Ira y el Amor (The Materials of Wrath and Love). The refugee crisis is examined from multiple perspectives in Amal, and a particularly winsome puppet takes centre stage in Cero Aguacero (Water No Water).

Many of the shows are award-winning and many are Canadian premieres. Avendano, an internationally honoured artist, has been to Canada before, performing in the Men in Dance Festival in Regina. Their first Toronto visit is historic as is the master class, "Installation for the Human Body," they are conducting. And there is undoubtedly a good chance of chancing upon them at one of the late night cabarets.