Composer Gabriela Ortiz took home the Grammy this year for best contemporary classical composition for “Revolución diamantina,” which she was inspired to write after seeing women’s protests in Mexico. The Boston Symphony Orchestra is performing its East Coast debut this weekend .
Ortiz joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath at Symphony Hall to speak about the project. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
Gabriela Ortiz: It about the different kinds of violence against women. And it’s about something that happened in Mexico that took my attention. One of the girls was raped by a police officer. And unfortunately, you know, the case remains unresolved. And because of that, there was a big, big protest in 2019 in which all these collective feminist movements went out to the streets and protest and shout. ... These women reacted very violently. They broke windows. They burned one of the police stations in one of the neighborhoods in the center of the city. They paint the whole city with with glitter, you know, that purple and pink. And, you know, they paint graffitis, but on really historical monuments. I mean, it was a whole disaster because they were very violent.
And I can understand them. ... If someone rapes my daughter, for example, I probably would end up smashing windows and you know, then a whole disaster because I can understand that anger. So they became very polemic. I mean, that’s the point.
And since then they call it “the glitter revolution”... all these you know newspapers call it, you know, revolución diamantina and also, you know, these, these feminist women movements start calling themselves “We’re going to do the revolución diamantina.” So the title of my ballet comes from that protest.
But then, I mean, it was not only that protest. In 2020, there was one of the biggest women protests I ever seen in my whole life. This is before the pandemic. And this was on the International Women’s Day on March, and I was in L.A. I couldn’t be in the protest, although I was dying to to be there, but I couldn’t because I was working with LA Phil. But then because I couldn’t be there, I posted in my Twitter account: “Please, if you call to this protest, make recordings and send it to me.” I didn’t know what I was going to do with these recordings, but for me it was very important to get those recordings. So I ask anyone, anyone, “Please send me your recordings with your phone, with whatever you’re hearing. I need to hear the sound of this protest. I need to hear things.” And I received I don’t know how many recordings. I mean, really a lot of recordings — a hundred recordings or something like that. So some of the slogans that the singers sing in my ballet came from those recordings, some of the slogans where just these people, you know, [said] very powerful phrases.
Song excerpt: con ropa o sin ropa, mi cuerpo no se toca.
Ortiz: So then something that it really moves me from that big, big protest is that, you know, the Mexico City government they were very worried about, “Wow. What are these women are going to do again? I mean, they are going to break windows, or what is going to happen?” Because of that, you know, they protect the whole Zócalo [the main square] was really protected with a lot of police.
But then they sent these contingent of policewomen. And instead of, you know, really being there just protecting and seeing, suddenly they start to march along with these women in the street. They marched together, because they thought the cause is the same. We’re just really being together against any kind of violence, and we have to stand together. Why [do] we have to be divided? There’s no point.
I start doing this research when I was just writing the ballet and I saw so many pictures, for example, of this woman giving flowers to the policewoman. I mean, really moving moments. And I really believe that, you know, metaphorically speaking. But I really believe that we have to stand together. That’s why, you know, the last movement, the only word that they say is “todas,” everybody.
Arun Rath: I asked her to tell us about the commission for “Revolución diamantina.”
Ortiz: This is really the first time that an orchestra is asking me. “OK, what you like to write yourself?” And then I said immediately, right away, “I want to write a ballet.” And I didn’t know the song yet. I didn’t know anything about it. And I just said, I want to write a ballet and a, you know, substantial ballet — not a short piece, I mean, a big piece for orchestra.
And then when I started to [think] about what’s going to be the subject of this ballet, you know, obviously, it’s not going to be a 19th century ballet about fairy tales and “Nutcracker” or, you know, that was not in my head. And then, you know, just talking to my brother — my brother is a visual artist, Rubén Ortiz Torres, my brother lives in Los Angeles, and he’s a full-time professor at UCSD. We were talking about that. “Rubén, I have this opportunity to write a ballet, but I don’t have any idea about ... I still don’t find the subject for this ballet.”
And, you know, my brother ... he’s been recently, you know, taking attention of the Chicanos work art. And the Chicanos, for example, they have these kind of lowriders — I don’t know if you have heard about these, you know, cars that they paint and they start, like, dancing. And so my brother was really studying that phenomenon of all of the lowriders. And he start painting ... and the painting is very glittery. I mean, it really glows and it’s very bright and it’s very glittery. So he paint a car like, you know, representing the revolución diamantina. He did this piece about this movement because he was very impressed. And then he told me about that and he said, “Well, I can see, you know, this subject bring bringing it into a ballet because just imagine movement and maybe the, you know, the dancers throwing glitter everywhere in the stage.” And immediately I was like, “Surely, you know, that can be very powerful. But also the theme is very powerful.” And I already work in some feminist themes in other works. So I really wanted to explore that. And then that’s how I decided to write about that.
