Chavela Vargas en vivo en El Hábito.
At age 72, after 13 years of silence due to problems with alcohol, Mexican legendary singer Chavela Vargas returns to the stage for the first time at Teatro-Bar El Hábito in 1991. With visible excitement and emotion, she sings from her famous repertoire of classic Ranchera songs, including 'Macorina', 'La Llorona' and 'Soledad'. The video alterates footage from the concert with interviews with Chavela, conducted by El Hábito co-founder Jesusa Rodríguez, where Vargas comments on her singing style, her struggles with alcoholism and depression, and her thoughts on life and death. Also included is a clip of Liliana Felipe and Jesusa Rodríguez singing the ode to Chavela Vargas, 'Doña Chavela'. Mexican director, actress, playwright, performance artist, scenographer, entrepreneur, and social activist Jesusa Rodréguez has been called the most important woman of Mexico. Often referred to as a 'chameleon', Rodríguez moves seemingly effortlessly and with vigor across the spectrum of cultural forms, styles, and tones. Her 'espectáculos' (as both spectacles and shows) challenge traditional classification, crossing with ease generic boundaries: from elite to popular to mass, from Greek tragedy to cabaret, from pre-Columbian indigenous to opera, from revue, sketch and 'carpa', to performative acts within political projects. Humor, satire, linguistic play, and the body are constants in her productions. She seeks to render corporal and, thus, visible, the tensions between the discourses in operation on and through the individual and collective body. Rodriguez's energy is intense and her commitment non-negotiable, always interrogating the nature, site, and consequences of power and its representation. Liliana Felipe, one of Latin America's foremost singers and composers, was born in Argentina in the 1950s. She left for Mexico just before the outbreak of the 'Dirty War' (1976), but her sister and brother-in-law were both 'disappeared'--victims of the military dictatorship's criminal politics. Liliana's music has a wide following in Latin America. She continues to be a powerful presence in Argentina, working with human rights organizations--especially H.I.J.O.S. (the organization of the children of the disappeared). In Mexico, Liliana went to one of Jesusa Rodríguez's performances. Jesusa, catching a glimpse of Felipe in the audience, remembers saying to herself: 'I am going to die with that woman.' Since then, Liliana and Jesusa have created two performance spaces, El Cuervo and later El Hábito in Coyoacán, Mexico City, that they still run. They 'married' in February 2000. El Hábito (www.elhabito.com.mx) is a hotbed for intellectuals, feminists, gay rights activists and open-minded, progressive people who want to be engaged by a smart and critical humor. In this off-off space, and with the collaboration of their theater cooperative Las Divas, Jesusa y Liliana have produced hundreds of shows since the 1980s. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics