Lilian Baylis Studio
La Chana
La Chana Film Screening
- Saturday 24 February 2018
- 13:00 h
- Lilian Baylis Studio
- Buy tickets
As we follow the backstage drama leading to La Chana’s final seated performance in 2013, she unravels her turbulent life story and reveals the secret that cut short her promising career: for 18 years she was a victim of domestic abuse at the hands of her first husband.
La Chana isn’t about regret for a life that could have been but about La Chana’s strength to keep overcoming difficult life circumstances that are. It’s a story about the process and power of creation, about love, friendship and re-invention. La Chana takes us deep into the essence of her passion and reveals a poetic and inspiring story that crystallizes the inevitable clashes between her life’s extremes and contradictions; between the artist on stage and the woman behind the scenes.
La Chana
“And surely the most extraordinary of those solos was ”The Passion That Creates,” performed by La Chana, who gave the illusion that she was as much a sorceress as a dancer. She rushed onstage with desperate urgency. Slashing at the air with her arms, she could have been a woman possessed by spirits. When her feet moved quickly, they appeared to quake and tremble. But never was there any loss of control in this outburst. Rather, her heelwork produced dry rattling noises and led to an amazing sequence of trills in which the sounds of her feet against the floor built in a tremendous crescendo, only to dwindle away to exist on the edge of a silence that La Chana made as awesome as her storms.”
The New York Times