COMMISSIONED BY PEREZ ART MUSEUM, MIAMI FL
CURATED BY MARIA ELENA ORTIZ
Jardines is a vibe more concerned with terrifying moments of physical, ontological, and spiritual invasion. Its dance sequences are approached through dialogues and choreography with themes of power relations, rivalry, ritual, and queer love, stylized with the use of colour contrasts with more naturalistic scenes.
Its sculptural components along photography, fashion and video installation in multiple parts related to both personal and collective histories in Puerto Rico. Due to the economic crisis in the island in the 80s, my father had to abandon his hamburger business and handed it over to friends, and it still runs to this day. This acts as a statement, as an expression of histories and desires traveling through time. I believe in acts of transcendence and the yearning for Utopia for Puerto Rico as an independent space.
The world of Jardines del Hamberguito: A Trujillo Alto Flamenco has run down and is ripe for the tropical apocalypse. The film is a psychedelic melodrama of an infamous tabloid storyline of a Puerto Rican ex beauty queen turned executioner who hires a hit-man to murder her North American businessman husband at “El Hamburguer” restaurant, my father’s business. The film was made to be a fragment of San Juan in the early 2000s, shot on a mini DV, a low fi cam, part II of a trilogy, fusing contemporary dance, experimental flamenco choreography, poetry, electronic music to interweave issues of ecological erosion, emotional and economic collapse.
Its narrative is part of a female vision its own entity experiencing the contradictory feelings of abandonment, violence, and hope—consumer and not consumer that is the dichotomy of living on the island of Puerto Rico.
Written and Directed: Cris Tufiño
Choreography: Jeanne D'Arc Casas
Camera: Oswaldo Colon
Music: Rimar Villaseñor
Editing: Alex Nguyen
Actors: Jeanne D'Arc Casas, Adelaida Perez, Karlos Javier Martinez
costume mens wear Design: Alejandro Lafontant
