Photo by Hollis King
STONE BELLY
STONE BELLY is a biomythographical work that re-turns the mga katawang lupa (Tagalog for "earthly bodies") dis-membered from their homelands, back home. Inspired by the stone-filled belly of the Philippine crocodile, the work re-myths the Philippine legends surrounding the crocodile as an ancestral vessel between this world and the next, and the re-membered stories of the Ilonggo and Batangenyan women in my family.
Re-calling stories from the women of my dad’s family in Iloilo City and my mom’s family in Batangas, Philippines, mythology in JL Umipig’s Kapwa Tarot, and research from the Center for Babaylan Studies, STONE BELLY is an interdisciplinary performance, ritual, and communing. The work excavates inherited traumas over generations of colonial violence, genocide, and migration. It provides communities the space to grieve the emotional and ecological distance of the katawang lupa (“earthly body”), dis-membered from their homeland, re-turning the queer diasporic body back home.
STONE BELLY imagines the belly as the site for which the Sacred, the Swallowed, the Surviving make safe passage home. It explores how the Sacred exists within earthly objects, invisible labours, and the women, children, and creatures who un/learn themselves in new lands. Paper becomes stone, body, spirit, in its chameleonic journey.
Music and choreographic scores are inspired by the invisibility of a Southeast Asian housewife and home-care like cooking and cleaning, representing the duality of sacredness within the mundane. The work is made in collaboration with its artists: five dance performers, two live musicians, and a site-specific installation of recycled brown paper and found objects that are interacted with throughout.
Trailer by Maxine Ann Evangelista
Photos by Hollis King
CREATIVE TEAM
Director, Choreographer, Co-Composer, Performer: Marie Lloyd Paspe
Contributing Choreographers and Performers: Luna Beller-Tadiar, Ching-I Chang, Paulina Meneses, Annie MingHao Wang
Composers and Live Musicians: treya lam, sugar vendil
Set Designer: Cate McCrea
Knowledge Bearer, Doula: Jana Lynne Umipig and Kilusan Circle
Mentor: yuniya edi kwon
Producer: Maxine Ann Evangelista
Rehearsal Assistant: Nikaio Bulan Sahar Thomashow (they/he)
Costume Design: Marie Lloyd Paspe, Ching-I Chang
Music Influences: “Kahit Limutin Mo” by Diomedes Maturan; “Luksampati (Song of Grief and Courage)” from Philippines: Bangon! Arise! Songs of the Philippine National Democratic Struggle
Inspired by stories told by Myla T. Luna of Taal Volcano in Mataas Na Kahoy, Batangas and Marcelino G. Paspe of Iloilo City, Iloilo; the birth of my nephew Skyler, mythology from JL Umipig’s Kapwa Tarot; essays from Babaylan: Filipinos and the Call of the Indigenous by Leny Mendoza Strobel; and my mga minamahal na kapwa from Kilusan Circle.
COMMISSIONING SUPPORT
STONE BELLY is commissioned by Harlem Stage and developed with funding from Creatives Rebuild New York Guaranteed Income for Artists and Target Margin Theater Institute Fellowship. It is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). Marie Lloyd Paspe is a TOPAZ ARTS 2024-25 AAPI Artist in Residence which supports and celebrates new works by Asian American and Pacific Islander dance artists.