Thirteenth International Conference on The Arts in Society

Abstract

It was 1932, and the ballet H.P. (Horsepower) was making its debut before a packed audience at the Philadelphia Opera. Dancers in oversized costumes moved across the set. Downstage, a humongous multicolored fish danced stiffly on teetering human legs. Blinded by his painted paper mache head, the big fish made a single pirouette and crashed into King Banana, who lost his balance and tripped over two blond mermaids playing cardboard lutes. When three giant pineapples waddled onto the scene, the unintentional comedy of clumsiness made an apt analogy. There was not enough room to move within the confines of the convention of an underdeveloped tropical paradise. The apparently unlimited material resources of the region that the dancers portrayed were, in fact, limited. The ungainly image of the Big Fish bumping into the Grand Pineapple signaled what was to be a series of misunderstandings between the Mexican and U.S. creators of H.P.: artist Diego Rivera and composer Carlos Chávez on the one hand, and conductor Leopold Stokowski and choreographer Catherine Little on the other. The plot was to be a celebration of the union of Anglo-American technology with Latin-American natural resources. However, H.P.’s awkwardness in portraying Pan-American unity on the stage was an indication that a perfect union between north and south was illusory. The United States was in the throes of the economic Great Depression. With a quarter of the U.S. population unemployed and hungry, the United States government moved to deport hundreds of thousands of Mexican laborers and even some U.S.-born citizens of Mexican origin in an overzealous attempt to protect jobs. And yet, at the same time, even as the north slammed the door shut on Mexican workers, it threw the gates wide open to acclaimed Mexican artists. Producers spared no expense for H.P., and advance press was overwhelmingly positive.