Ballet Nepantla’s Mística

Co-presentation with Jacob’s Pillow

Mística honors the company’s ancestors by celebrating the creative and spiritual energies of their Indigenous, Afro, and Hispanic roots. It commemorates Día de Muertos traditions and transports the audience into the afterlife through black light and Ballet Nepantla’s unique fusion of ballet folklórico and contemporary dance.

Ballet Nepantla originated from a series of pláticas between founders Andrea Guajardo and Martín Rodríguez Vigil. Their early professional identities emerged from distinct genres: Andrea from classical ballet and contemporary dance, and Martín from traditional Mexican folklórico. They envisioned a new form of expression that fused the two modalities—an aesthetic speaking to the historical, cultural, and social realities of being Mexican, Mexican American, immigrant, and transcultural.

Drawing inspiration from Gloria Anzaldúa’s borderlands theory, Andrea and Martín imagined performances that spoke to the “in-between” qualities of being from both sides of the borderland. They found the idea of Nepantla, a Nahuatl term of the Indigenous people of Mexico. Nepantla provides a historical, intellectual, and artistic framework for exploring the “in-between” spaces of history and culture.

This program is supported in part by the Irene Hunter Fund for Dance at MASS MoCA in association with Jacob’s Pillow.