Tonight I’m sharing explorations and collected sketches called La Mancanza del Futuro (The Missing of the Future), a glimpse from my process of developing Fertile Land, Fertile Body, a multilingual ritual opera that will include ancient and original music, dance, and projection largely inspired by my study of Javanese, East Timorese, and Korean traditional music and dance. This opera investigates how human-caused environmental toxicity affects our fertility while sharing stories of struggle and hope from women overcoming or who overcame infertility. The twenty-person chamber ensemble, including myself as composer/librettist/vocalist/multi-instrumentalist plus nineteen women and nonbinary vocalist-instrumentalists who double as choir, will use choreographed movements to express how overcoming barrenness in both land and bodies are intertwined.

I draw from my own fertility journey as well as invoke the spirit of my late mother, who suffered minor strokes in her last days, but still moved with grace and tenderness into her transition to the next realm, the video footage of which we still have from security cameras which my brother and I had set up to check on her from afar in her last year. Throughout the evening across the Academy grounds, whenever you see me, I invite you to walk and trace my movements and explore your life through slow breaths and movements, which may allow you to perceive and access other dimensions of time and beloved people in your life not here in physical form.”