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NIÑA DANCE (2009)
music by Lev 'Ljova' Zhurbin
poems in Spanish by Marjorie Agosín and Saúl Yurkievich
English translations by Cola Franzen & Celeste Kostopulos-Cooperman
"bright Tex-Mex-inflected trumpet figures, tango rhythms and a Weillian darkness.. to frame a gripping cycle about the hundreds of young women who have disappeared (or been found murdered) in Juárez, Mexico, since 1993... haunting texts.."
--Allan Kozinn, New York Times (May 11, 2009)
Listen to the entire premiere performance at the Carnegie Hall Commissions website!
Commissioned by the Carnegie Hall Corporation, as part of the Osvaldo Golijov & Dawn Upshaw Professional Training Workshop.
NIÑA DANCE is a song cycle inspired by the unsolved murders & disappearances of women and young girls in the city of Juárez, Mexico, situated just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. Since 1993, over 600 bodies have been discovered, and over 1000 are still missing. Many were students, and most were maquiladora (duty-free and tariff-free factory) workers. Few arrests have been made, and the overwhelming majority of the cases remain unsolved. Pink crosses dot the streets of Juárez to remember the lost. While the murders (sometimes referred to as “femicides”) are a particularly sensitive subject in Mexico, the murder of innocent women is spread through other nations as well.
“Niña Dance” is a tribute and meditation to the memory of the mothers and daughters who have disappeared without a trace, and a protest to all for whom their mother's love was never fully understood.
As the son of two generations of translators (both my mother and her father translated centuries of German poetry into Russian), and having grown up listening to classic opera recordings in Russian, I was compelled to set this song cycle in English, hoping that the words would reach a deeper impact with a New York audience.
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