Broken Tailbone by Carmen Aguirre (review)

Carmen Aguirre’s latest solo show, Broken Tailbone, was structured as a Latin American dance lesson, interwoven with tales of her own experiences in the hidden world of Latinx dance halls in Canada. These seemingly unrelated stories all emerged from the geopolitical reality of Latin America, all from a leftist point of view. In Broken Tailbone, Aguirre is a Latina Canadian taking up space and requiring spectators to not only listen to her, but to do exactly what she tells them to do. The mere concept of the show was a revolutionary act. Even so, I argue that the physical demands of a ninety-minute piece of participatory theatre potentially limited the impact of the work, even if it is a necessary piece of theatre.

Broken Tailbone was commissioned, developed, and produced by Nightswimming, a Toronto-based dramaturgical company that explores the boundaries of theatrical storytelling. At the end of a two-year tour of Aguirre’s Blue Box, director Brian Quirt developed the concept that would become Broken Tailbone. The audience would join Aguirre onstage for a dance party at the end of the first act of Blue Box. Quirt and Aguirre wanted to take this idea further and explore the idea of a fully participatory dance party.

Broken Tailbone uses a unique storytelling device, as well as a unique theatrical style. The show is not scripted. Instead, Aguirre hits certain benchmarks with each song that help keep the narrative—and the lesson—going. While any particular performance of Broken Tailbone features a slightly different “script,” the show is scored and Aguirre is in constant communication with DJ Don Pedro, who creates the shows soundscape and helps build the dance-hall atmosphere. The songs evoke memories from which Aguirre inserts herself into the history of Latinx peoples in Canada.

Throughout the lesson, Aguirre explains the history of each dance form, the history of Latinx dance halls in Canada, and the geopolitical history of Latin America. Broken Tailbone interweaves Aguirre’s family’s history with her own adventures in Latinx dance halls. The political climate influenced the atmosphere and demographics of the space. Broken Tailbone explains why certain people arrived in Canada from Latin America. Amid political conflict, different Latin American ethnic groups went to dance halls and entered a utopian oasis where disparate identity markers no longer mattered. It is difficult to tell where each story begins and ends. As with Aguirre’s identity, stories blur together to form a cohesive narrative. When Pedro plays a new song, Aguirre tells the audience about it, occasionally choosing lyrics to not only explain, but to move the show’s narrative forward. These songs are not chosen at random; rather, they are perfectly strung together to build a narrative soundscape, taking spectators from Aguirre’s parents’ arrival in Vancouver in 1973 to the present-day climate that led to Aguirre breaking her tailbone.

Carmen Aguirre in Broken Tailbone. (Photo: Erin Brubacher.)

Yet, what made Broken Tailbone most unique was how Aguirre built an interactive dance lesson. The performance broke the fourth wall entirely. When audiences entered, there was nowhere to sit except for a few seats on either side of the stage. It was clear that to fully experience the show you had to be on your feet and ready to move. There was no barrier—physical or verbal—between performer and audience. In this way, Aguirre engaged audience members, making them active participants in the event.

Carmen Aguirre and DJ Don Pedro in Broken Tailbone. (Photo: Javier Sotres.)

The show was quite physically demanding; indeed, Aguirre made it exhausting. In the end, we all had “broken our tailbones.” The corporeal demands of Broken Tailbone required spectators to put themselves in a physical space. As such, the physical demands of the show made me question how far is too far. While the dance floor was full at the beginning of the...