Summer 2024
In the Spirit of Collaboration BODYTRAFFIC, Pedro Osuna, & SUUVI
By Claudia Bauer
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Collaboration is the soul of the performing arts, and the best collaborations are a thrilling alchemy of artists. A beautiful illustration of this is Bloquea’o, a Cuban-inspired dance created by Spanish-born Los Angeles-based composer Pedro Osuna, internationally acclaimed cellist SUUVI, Havana-born choreographer Joan Rodriguez, and the Los Angeles contemporary dance company BODYTRAFFIC. Co-commissioned by Festival Napa Valley, Bloquea’o will receive its world premiere at the Dance Gala on July 19 at Charles Krug. The program also includes Trey McIntyre’s Blue Until June and an excerpt from Matthew Neenan’s I Forgot the Start.
“A huge goal in all my work is to bridge gaps between people.” ~SUUVI
“A huge goal in all my work is to bridge gaps between people,” says SUUVI, whose family came to the United States as Cuban refugees. “I grew up hearing stories about the tensions between the U.S. and Cuba, as well as the experience of everyday life on the island.” Bloquea’o reflects on home, loss, and human connection in a subtle narrative and sound score inspired by the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Osuna based the score on the lively clave drumbeat of Cuban music, then added cello lines for SUUVI and rhythms for GRAMMY® Award-winning percussionist Ricky Matute. To imbue Bloquea’o with a sense of time and place, he and SUUVI layered in the street sounds of Havana – domino games, whistling, people gathering in the city streets – as well as vintage recordings of phone calls, Yoruba chants, and speeches by John F. Kennedy and Fidel Castro. These sounds will be looped in while SUUVI and Matute perform live. “There are more than a dozen cellos and another dozen percussion parts, all building on top of each other,” Osuna says. “It’s almost like a 24-piece ensemble but built around looping so that it can be performed by just two musicians.”
Osuna and SUUVI consider the cast of BODYTRAFFIC’s eight dancers as their onstage co-collaborators. “Musicians play an instrument; dancers are their own instruments,” says SUUVI, who first worked with dancers as a Juilliard student and has produced short films with artists from the San Francisco Ballet and American Ballet Theatre. “The more I work with dancers, the more I understand the integration between myself and how I play the cello.”
Through the alchemy of music and dance in Bloquea’o, she says, “I hope people get a glimpse of Cuba as something more than just the beautiful Caribbean getaway — it tells the stories and struggles of those who live there and whose voices often go unheard.”
Dance Gala: BODYTRAFFIC
Friday, July 19, 2024 at 6:30pm
Festival Napa Valley Stage at Charles Krug