In 1994, the disastrous Northridge earthquake killed more than 60 people, injured thousands more, and damaged homes and freeways across Los Angeles. The event still lives on in many memories, particularly in the San Fernando Valley where it was centered.
Now the experimental performance troupe Diavolo seeks to commemorate the event through dance. Their new show Existencia opens at The Soraya in Northridge on January 17, exactly 30 years after the quake hit.
Soraya Executive and Artistic Director Thor Steingraber commissioned Diavolo to create the production, and brought in Oscar-winning drummer Antonio Sânchez (score of the film Birdman) and Grammy-nominated vocalist Thana Alexa to create original music that will be performed live during the shows.
Jaques Heim, Diavolo's founder and creative director, says his motivations for exploring the traumatic incident through art are deeply personal.
When the quake hit, he had launched Diavolo in Northridge just two years earlier, and was living in an apartment complex in North Hollywood. He says in the wake of the quake, one of the biggest surprises was how fast communities came together.
“I did not know my neighbors at all until the earthquake,” he says. “Suddenly, all our neighbors came out of the apartments, and we started sharing food and water and flashlights and blankets, and hugging each other. … It's amazing that it's only in a moment of disaster [that] people come together and create an amazing bond and amazing community.”
Heim says the very real danger present in the performance of Existencia — which features large architectural structures collapsing on stage as dancers perform — is meant to inspire this human impulse to protect each other.
“I want to create this moment where the dancers have to help each other in a realistic way on stage at every minute to be able to survive the show that they're doing — and that is a metaphor of what people go through [during] disasters,” says Heim.
He adds, “We live in a time where disaster is all around us, and we have to be able to face it, to understand it, to control it. This piece is not a dark piece, it’s actually a beautiful, inspirational piece about community.”
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