Axis Mundi – Debate.com.mx - April 25, 2012

Maureen Fleming will dance today between heaven and earth.
The dancer will present her performance Axis Mundi in Pablo de Villavicencio.

BY CAROLINA VALVERDE M.

Culiacan, Sin. - After ten years, Maureen Fleming returns to Culiacan to present Axis Mundi for the second time, but she is not the same.

As part of the twentieth International Jose Limon Dance Festival, Maureen Fleming, based in New York will offer this striking performance, which, she said is inspired by a poem written by Rumi, one of the greatest mystic poets of Islam. In an interview with the media, the Butoh dancer delved into Axis Mundi, which will appear today in the Pablo Villavicencio theater at 8:00 PM.

About Axis Mundi.
In attempting to define the substance of the performance that she brings to Culiacan, Maureen Fleming, with the help of a translator, said that it is "a convergence between the plane of the earthly and the ethereal, between two worlds, a concept of the encounter between the world of eternity and the physical. She also explained that this work communicates a perspective towards life that has much to do with the crisis facing this country. In her multimedia presentations, Fleming invents surreal movement poetry with the discipline of a classicist and the imagination of an iconoclast, and explores, through metaphorical images, our never-ending pursuit of what is universal about the journey of the soul.

In the press conference the dancer and choreographer of Delphos, Claudia Lavista, with whom Fleming has performed in other festivals with before, joined her. Both dancers said they identify with poetic images and the ritualistic aspect of dance in their artistic creative process.

A peculiar history.
Maureen Fleming is definitely not a common artist. Born in postwar Japan, at the age of two, she was thrown through the windshield of a car when her mother slammed on the breaks when a Japanese man on a bicycle, stopped in front of her car.  This accident caused serious problems in one of her vertebrae, but interestingly, Fleming explains that it was this event that initiated her dance. "Since then, I started experimenting with movement, to twist my body, my vertebrae one by one, to recover, "she said, adding jokingly that when I flew through the windshield of the car, it was "my first dance."

Learning.
After studying with Kazuo Ohno, co-founder of Butoh, Fleming continued her artistic training in New York with teacher Margaret Craske, and in 1984 became an artist-in-residence at La MaMa ETC. Minimalism, the divine, the clash of cultures, poetry and Butoh are some of the items you will see today in Axis Mundi. Do not miss out.