Day of the Dead LIVE! at the Brooklyn Art Haus

Day of the Dead LIVE! takes you on a musical journey that is all FUN, celebrating Día de los Muertos, the holiday of family remembrance. With diabolical music from classical and popular composers, Mexican and European, this is a one-hour piano and puppet performance boasting larger-than-life characters, including jugglers, stilt-walkers, ghosts, skeletons, and dancers. It’s a witty, wild, cultured romp and the ultimate family reunion — with dearly departed ancestors as the guests of honor!

Opening at the Brooklyn Art Haus in Williamsburg on Wednesday October 18th, with shows Wednesday through Saturday October 18th – October 28th at 6:00PM, plus Sundays October 22nd and 29th at noon, AND Halloween night Tuesday October 31st AND Día de los Muertos Wednesday November 1st (both at 6:00).  Tickets are priced at just $25 and can be purchased at www.BKArtHaus.com.

Day of the Dead LIVE! presents music for adults and children of all ages, plus delightful fantasies for the child in all of us.  Opening with Saint-Saen’ Danse Macabre; we travel from Dante’s Inferno to Paradiso in Liszt’s Dante Sonata; we hear popular songs of Mexican folk composers like Rubio and Velázquez; and rhapsodic compositions by Mexican classical composers like Chávez and Ponce (a little Bernstein, too!).  All animated by dancers, acrobats, and strange creatures!

Our music is performed by the 26-year-old virtuoso pianist Llewellyn Sanchez-Werner. The merry life-sized puppets and direction from the circus-trained aerialist Juanita Cardenas.  The full cast includes Victor Ayala, Jean Tae Francis, Agave L’amour, Ryan Shinji Murray, Anthony Rodriguez, Tyler West, Lighting Design Kyle Driggs, Stage Manager Pher Gleason and Stagehand Audra Brandt.

Center stage is a festive candlelit ofrenda (family shrine), illuminated throughout the performance, where images of the cast’s family and Mexican revolutionaries appear, including Francisco “Pancho” Villa, Emiliano Zapata Salazar, and Cesar Chavez on horseback; the women soldiers known as Adelitas holding Mexican flags; artists Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, as well as the author and women’s rights advocate, Juana Inés de la Cruz.

Ponce’s Balada Mexicana rings in a final fête with ancestors and ghoulish creatures before they return to the underworld. The audience is invited to dance as Bernstein’s Mambo! plays the curtain call.