Hi, dance friends. I’m Margaret Fuhrer, editor and producer of The Dance Edit newsletter and podcast. Welcome to the 15th episode of The Dance Edit Extra!

This week, you’ll hear from choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, one of the very few women of color who has been working steadily as a choreographer in ballet. In fact she’s been prolific: over the past 15+ years, she has created works for companies all over the world.

Ballet Hispánico just premiered Annabelle’s new evening-length ballet, Doña Perón, a portrait of the Argentine politician and activist Eva Perón—otherwise known, to many Argentines and also to Andrew Lloyd Webber fans, as Evita. Perón was a complicated and controversial figure, not at all a typical ballet ingenue, and that’s one of the reasons I was eager to talk to Annabelle about this work—which, as you’ll hear, goes in a very different direction than Webber’s famous musical.

Throughout her career, Annabelle has been putting multifaceted women, women of action and determination and grit, on ballet stages. She is helping to expand the idea of what women are “allowed” to be in ballet. And, especially in the past few years, she has also focused on stories that speak to her own heritage as a Latina, like Perón’s story.

I hope you enjoy our conversation, which is both a deep dive into the making of Doña Perón and a broader consideration of the types of stories ballet should tell and the types of people who should be telling them. Here’s Annabelle.

[pause]

Margaret Fuhrer:
Hi, Annabelle. Thank you so much for coming on The Dance Edit Extra, today.

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa:
Thank you for having me, Margaret.

Margaret Fuhrer:
I’ve been really eager to talk to you, ever since I first heard about your new ballet, Doña Perón, because I mean, wow. What a story this is to tell. And especially for you to tell, with the help of this company, of Ballet Hispánico. I mean, we could not be farther from the usual story ballet worlds, of birds and fairies, which is really exciting.

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa:
Yes. It’s really an adventurous undertaking of this small company. They’ve existed 50 years. And as a celebration, they wanted to expand the mission of the company and also be a storytelling company. So, I feel very honored and very grateful that they chose me, and they put all their trust in me, to come and tell the story of Eva Perón.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Well, so what drew you to the story of Eva Perón? Why did you think it would benefit from dance storytelling?

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa:
Well, I like difficult characters and complex persons. I like the fact that she’s a real person, she lived. I like that she’s controversial, that it’s difficult to pinpoint the choices that she’s made. It will always, of course, remain a mystery. When you read her own biography that she wrote herself, it’s only in the good ways. And when you read other biographies, they give you another perspective.

So for me, yeah, I feel like a researcher. I try to go into finding, what is the drive of that person? I called her a character, but she’s not a character. She’s a real person. Why did she make those choices in her life, that we condemn? When it was in the fifties, what was the position of the woman at the time? Where does she come from and what are her wounds?

We went all the way back to her youth. We saw that she was actually a bastard child. She was not recognized by her father. Her father was of a certain class and decided… In those countries, in the Latin American countries at the time, it was very common for a man to have two families. So, at some point, she was six years old… Was it so? No, not that old. But he decided to go back to his first family and left her mother with five children, alone. And when she was six years old, he died. They tried to go to the funeral. The family did not accept that the mistress was there with the kids. So that left, I think, a big wound as a child, to live that. That you can’t be with your father, you’re not recognized by him.

I think that was a drive for her, her whole life, to be recognized by men. Please love me. And to also be recognized that, being poor doesn’t mean that you’re an outcast.

So, her drive was to eradicate poverty. I mean, there are still some people here in the world, that try to still do that. So yeah, from there, she started making decisions to go up the ladder. She saw that being an actress and being a radio presenter, gave her a platform and an opportunity to connect with many people and to be recognized and maybe to help poverty.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Obviously, you’ve done extensive research for this production. Can you talk a little about how you went about that research and what resources you used?

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa:
Books, mostly. I’ve seen the movie, long, long time ago. I didn’t see it again, to research. That was one of the first musical that I saw, when I was 20 years old, when it came out. I did read about, that she never met Che Guevara, which is a main character in the musical production. They needed that because they wanted her to question herself, if what she was doing was right. So, it’s kind of a voice that is inside.

But we’re not using the Che Guevara. We really went from a biographical point of view. Where does she come from? How do we translate all this in dance language, without words?

For us, we have one device, is that there is a little Evita. So, she will be confronted by her younger self. That is because her past is following her. She has been hiding. She’s been lying about when she was born, where she was born. She’s been very mysterious about that, so that people wouldn’t judge her about where she came from. So, that is a device that we’re using in the ballet.

Another device that we’re using in the ballet, and that is—for me, I don’t know, the fact that she had had only seven years…she was seven years in power. Let’s put that way. And then she died at a very young age, of cancer. I imagine that she didn’t want to be sick. So, maybe they were already signs that she knew she was in pain, but she didn’t go to the doctor because she was too busy. So it’s something eating her up. How long was it eating her up? We don’t know. That is a mystery that I already put, very early in the story, that something is hurting her inside. We don’t know until we find out, very late in the ballet, that she’s very sick.

In my research, I found out that Juan Perón actually knew that she had cancer, but didn’t tell her.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Wow.

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa:
So, she thought that she had appendicitis. And it wasn’t until very late before she died, she actually knew that she was dying of cancer. That is really weird, why he did that to protect her. She finally felt that her audience—her descamisados, the poor people—were loving her, and that it was very short, was going to be very brief.

But unfortunately, the pain that the cancer gave her, changed her personality. She became very vile and strong in her words. So, in the politics, that was a danger, for the political party of Perón. So, he had to shut her down.

There was even a research that came out maybe five or seven years ago, that a lobotomy was made on her…

Margaret Fuhrer:
Oh my gosh.

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa:
…10 days before she died. In the fifties, we thought that having a lobotomy would lessen the pain. I don’t know that we do that still, now. That is something that, when the body was retrieved, that they saw that she had a scar on top of her skull and that…the mysteries of Eva Perón and her life and her body, that then disappeared after she died.

But yeah, we don’t go that much into details in the ballet, but these are definitely some research things, that informed me and inspired me.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Oh, gosh. There’s so much there, that I never knew. I never heard that Juan Perón knew well before she did that she had cancer. That’s so 1950s, that the husband knows before the wife does. My goodness.

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa:
Yes.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Whenever we talk about Eva Perón, immediately, as you said, there’s sort of the shadow of Evita and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Everyone starts singing “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina.” Of course, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, that’s two white men, telling the story of a Latina. So, it’s beautiful that now you, as a Latina, are reclaiming that story.

Aside from not including the Che Guevara plot device, in what other ways have you sort of distanced this ballet from the Webber version? Is that something you were consciously thinking about as you were working?

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa:
Yes, definitely. I mean, I’ve worked with Nancy Meckler, she’s a theater director in London, and with Peter Salem, the composer. We’ve already worked four times before, with Streetcar, with Frida Kahlo, with The Little Prince. So yeah, we’re really a triangular unit.

His melodies are just incredible. They’re rooted in tango and malambo. So, all in the Argentinian music background. That was wonderful to have him on the team and help bring the Argentinian life to the stage and to the ears. There’s no single note of “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina.” It’s already disappointing everyone. [laughs]

Margaret Fuhrer:
No, no, no!

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa:
It was a device. It was very much Hollywood, and very much rooted in the film first. This is really dance and the power of movement and the power of, how do we create a big mass? The dancers changing costumes very quickly in the wings, to come as poor people or oligarchs.

We have also videos that we’re going to use on the sets. The set is very spare. I really wanted to create a timeless environment, so that we can focus on the journey of a woman more than, oh, it happened in 1952 and it happened exactly there. So that the audience can use their own imagination and try to understand her instead of condemning her, that we understand what this woman was going through.

So, instead of having scenes, we decided to have images. Each image tells a facet of who she is or her life. So, that’s how we try to make that come to life as a narrative.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Oh, that’s fascinating. Yeah. And then it becomes a more universal story, instead of one anchored in a specific place and time.

How did you develop the movement language for this ballet? Because there are so many rich references to draw from.

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa:
Yes. I thought, I will not put a tango on stage because I’m not a tango dancer. I didn’t want to appropriate a style that I really… I’ve had like four classes, but seriously. So there’s a tango feel, maybe, to some moments, but it’s really much more contemporary dance, with some tango. So, it’s not a real tango, but the music leans on tango, on malambo, and see where that is rooted in, but no copy.

We were thinking, four years ago, to have a tango choreographer on the team. I thought, we’re not tango dancers. It’s going to take so much time for those really good dancers to master the style of tango. So, I stayed away from it, but yeah, there are influences of it, that’s all.

Margaret Fuhrer:
I see. Yeah.

You started talking about this already, but I’m curious—Perón was such a mysterious and controversial figure, and that’s part of what makes her so compelling, that there are all these ambiguities in her life. How do you deal with those ambiguities in the ballet? How do you illustrate them?

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa:
Well, you first show the pain. Therefore, you understand better her decisions and her journey, that she really went for status and money. So, every time there’s a man that has a bit more money, she goes for him because she wants to get to a position where she can actually help the world.

In terms of how do we show it—I worked with Nancy Meckler. I was making this duet—because it’s amazing as a choreographer, to make a duet. It’s always the most romantic part of the ballet. She said, “Well, we already had the romantic duet. Now we have to see that, them together as a duo, also created controversy and they shut people off.” They bought seven of the… I think, six of the press or six of the newspapers. That is very undemocratic. So, this duet should not be about the romance, but we should see that they were also bad people. They made bad choices.

That was interesting, too, and difficult, to show her not so positive sides. I think it was really needed. Otherwise, it would just look like we just glorified her. Although I have a lot of respect for her, and I understand her choices, I wonder if now, she would look at the economy of her country, Argentina, and think that it was the right choice that she made. I don’t know if the system, the economical system that she believed in, if that really works for a country. That, we will never know. I wish she would have lived a little and could reflect on or develop her ideologies. I don’t know.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. Well, I mean, one of the things that I love about this ballet is, as you said before, it’s about a real person. A real person that we can’t know fully, who was very complicated.

You have, for a long time now, been really invested in creating that type of story ballet, especially in the portrayal of women. It’s not just, as we said before, birds or princesses or bird princesses. It’s women who have multiple sides, some of which are not very likable. At the risk of asking a very obvious question, why do we need ballets like that and more ballerina roles like that?

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa:
I think it’s not about putting on negative stories on stage, especially now. We need something that is more hopeful and more colorful. But I think I find it interesting, as an artist. An artist is supposed to be a chameleon. I love to see that they take on the challenge, to put all these subtleties of a person on stage, that it’s not so obvious. “Oh, and now I’m in love!” There’s always a subtext. I love creating these kind of ballets and these kind of stories, where the subtext is more important than the actual, what you see on the outside.

I think that—not reflects, shows more who we are as people. We are all more complex than in the fairy tale stories. It’s not all just black and white, the black swan, the white swan.

It’s not that easy sometimes, to pinpoint who we are, why we are. Usually, it’s Pavlov reactions that we have to situations. Sometimes it’s hard even to understand your own self. Why do you react like that? Usually, it goes back to our childhood. I find that interesting, to portray humanity in all its complexities onstage.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). It’s almost strange that we don’t have more ballets like that, because dance is so good at portraying that type of complexity. You can get so much in, in a way that encapsulates more than language can.

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa:
Yeah. I don’t want to generalize, but I think that the dance ballet institutions think that their audience want to see fairies and beauty. I think they’re open to see a more difficult… Still embedded in the beauty of the physicality of dance and musicality, all of that is there, that’s just going to be some beautiful dancing—but yeah, the story will be more gripping.

We had actually a donor coming from Chicago to watch a run through. That was our very first run through. That’s so vulnerable when you… Because even as a choreographer I had never seen the piece in one go. We finished. And obviously at the end, she dies, because that’s the story. We don’t have a surprise.

And she was crying. She couldn’t stop crying. How beautiful those dancers were, invested and committed to tell the story? That I really worked on, the “Why are we telling this story?” The whole, that you feel for her, at the very end. That was great to have that, as a first reaction of a run through. So, we hope that we have that too, when the lights and costumes are coming.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. Only more so, I’m sure, once everything’s there.

I don’t want to overgeneralize either; I want all types of choreographers to be able to tell all the types of stories they want to tell. But it does seem like this sort of story, where a powerful and interesting woman is right at the center of it—it seems like the type of story we’ll get more and more of, as more women get more opportunities to choreograph.

The fact that there are relatively few women choreographing in ballet is one of those problems that I feel like, people have been sounding alarm bells about it for decades. And yet it persists. You have been working as a female choreographer in this space for many years now. You’re one of the few. So, from your uniquely informed perspective on this topic, why do you think it remains such an entrenched problem? And have you seen signs of progress recently? Because it does feel like things are beginning to shift.

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa:
Yeah, definitely. I’m grateful for Luke Jennings and Graham Watts, who were British journalists that started ringing the bells about, where are the female choreographers? I’m like, “We’re here.” We’re active. There’s many of us. We do work, but we don’t do the big work. We don’t do the big box office pieces because we are not given the trust.

Now, 15 years later, I am making those full length pieces, and I am approached by companies. The thing is—I don’t know, and I don’t want to generalize. I can only talk about myself, because I happen to be a choreographer, and I happen to be a female. But I sometimes get asked to make Peter Pan. Those stories, I’d be working much more and making more narrative ballets, if I would say yes, to make a happy piece that attracts families.

Especially in the States, the art doesn’t exist if we don’t have support, but also if we don’t have ticket sales. So, it’s finding the balance in a season, in, okay, there is a Peter Pan, a ballet that’s going to sell tickets because you can bring your family to it. And then there’s A Streetcar Named Desire, that you don’t have to bring a family to it. But that should balance out a whole season and surprise the audience that is savvy in being surprised, in what art and what ballet can be.

So, I think it’s also a matter of, are the female choreographers ready to do some Disney stories?

Margaret Fuhrer:
Hmm.

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa:
I’m thinking, oh, maybe those directors have asked these women. Maybe we were all like, eh, not so much my thing. Let me do Coco Chanel. Let me do Frida Kahlo. Let me do Evita Perón.

So yeah, it’s getting there. I think that directors are definitely looking into who tells stories. But then, they also have to look at the business model, and they have to sell tickets. The triple bill won’t sell. So, when there’s a story ballet, it has to be something that will include the family. It’s not so black and white, once again, that they don’t want to invite female choreographers. But like I said to one of a company, I said, “I don’t want your company to be called a Titanic, if I come with my grand ideas.”

So yes, I have more understanding, now that I’m older and I hear more about the other side and the business side, management side of a dance company. That it’s, if they were all free to say, “Yes, I’ll do what my heart says,” then we’ll have more of new stories. But yes, they have to sell tickets and they have to survive. They’re responsible for all these people that make a living, dancers…

Again, I wouldn’t just crucify them. I hope that they find a balance in a programming season, to have that one ballet where they do take the risk. Who knows? That one ballet that was very risky, did not get amazing reviews, did not sell many tickets, maybe in five, six, seven years, that’s the ballet that the audience wants to see.

So, you need to nurture those ballets. Give it a chance for a second viewing, also for the choreographer to revisit it, because it’s never good in the first time you make. It has to grow. So, that’s what I’m hoping.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. I agree with you. It’s always such a complicated set of circumstances that all these directors are navigating. I think audience education is an important part of it too, because audiences have been taught to expect certain things from ballet, to expect the white swan, the black swan. “That’s what I want, when I go see the ballet, because that’s what ballet is.” But yeah, taking that risk with a piece like Doña Perón, that might be different.

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa:
Yeah. I have to mention Peter Boal of PNB. He had once programmed a piece by Forsythe, called One Flat Thing, Reproduced, with 16 tables.

Margaret Fuhrer:
All the tables. Yeah.

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa:
Yes. And the audience was like, what the hell is this? They were lost. They really did not like it so much. He thought, you know what, two years later, you have to see it again to appreciate it.

I love that persistence. I love that he didn’t think, oh, well, here’s Peter Pan. He didn’t make it easy on his audience, and he educated them by showing it again. So, once they liked One Flat Thing, Reproduced by Forsythe, then they start liking also other works, because that was really far out there.

Margaret Fuhrer:
The gateway piece. The gateway piece.

You’ve developed this really beautiful relationship with Ballet Hispánico, over the years. Can you talk a little bit about why you love working with this company? What makes them special?

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa:
I was approached in 2010 by Eduardo Vilaro, who was the director of Luna Negra in Chicago. He had heard that there was this Latina choreographer in town at Fall For Dance, and he to check me out. So, he came to see a work that I did at BalletX. And he said, “If you come to Luna Negra, please make a piece. I love your work, but it has to be about your Latin roots.”

I was so surprised I said, “But what? Who would be interested?” I tried to be this European choreographer, inspired by Hans van Manen and Forsythe and Jiří Kylián and all these male, white…[laughter] I wanted to blend in, so that I would be accepted. And having something from my roots, my Colombian background, that I didn’t think that that was artistic or would interest anyone.

So, I made a piece there called Nube Blanco. It was at the Harris Theater. And the audience loved it. They just screamed. I was so surprised. I was like, oh my God, there’s an audience for this work?

So, I started accepting my Latin roots. Accepting that I shouldn’t be ashamed of it, and see that it is valuable and see that it can be artistic and can move people and give a voice to my Latino background.

Yes, I was very surprised. And since then, he’s invited me every two, three years, to make a work. And every time I choose something of what is being Latin for me. One side is, I grew up in Belgium at the Royal Ballet of Flanders. I had flamenco danced for seven years. I had a very good relationship with my teachers. So, that comes a lot in my work.

Although I’m not Spanish, I’m Colombian, I really grew up with that technique and how men and women behave in Latin culture. What are the stereotypes? How do you see those stereotypes in movies? It’s always that they get that, but especially more in the eighties and nineties, when I grew up. Now, it’s a little bit more fluid. Therefore, in Tiburones, I put the man, the macho man with an open shirt, and I put them on heels. Because I was like, they’re always this macho? Well, let’s put them on heels and make it more fluid. And funnily enough, the audience still thought it was sexy. [laughter] But actually, it was an homage to the over-machismo image that we put in movies, about the male lover, Latin lover.

So yes, every time I come into the building, it feels like I’m back with the family. Eduardo trusts me—I don’t know why! [laughter] But he doesn’t come and see what I’m doing. I ask him on Friday, “Would you like to see what I…” So that’s always wonderful, that you get so much freedom and so much trust. All the pieces I’ve made for them are so different and still, he trusts me. He’s like, “Sure. Come play with us.”

So yes, I’ve grown really very fond of them, and I feel part of the family. And yeah, I’m always very moved, every time there’s a piece that is finished, that I can be back with the family. Now we’re presenting Doña Perón.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Oh, I’m so excited to see what you’ve created with all these beautiful dancers. Annabelle, thank you so much for sharing your perspective and your insights. Listeners, Doña Perón just had its world premiere a few days ago, in New Orleans. Now, Ballet Hispánico is performing it in Detroit. It’s going to bring it to Chicago before the ballet’s New York debut, April 1st to 3rd. So, we have a link in the show notes, with more information about the ballet and how to get tickets.

And Annabelle, merde for this show and for the many projects you have going on.

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa:
Thank you so much, Margaret. Thank you for having me on your show.

[pause]

One more thank-you to Annabelle. As promised, we have links in the show notes with complete information about Doña Perón. We’ve also got Annabelle’s social handles in there, so you can give her a follow and keep up with everything she’s working on—she is doing so much.

Thanks to all of you for subscribing to The Dance Edit Extra. I’ll see you back here in two weeks for another new episode. Have a great weekend, everyone.