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Core Ensemble Performs ‘Tres Vidas’ Honoring Influential Latin American Women

Core Ensemble Performs ‘Tres Vidas’ Honoring Influential Latin American Women

October 29, 2019


Flyer for Tres Vidas with three people on it performing different actions

Core Ensemble will perform “Tres Vidas” on Tuesday, November 5, 2019 at 7:00 p.m. in the James and Susan Moeser Auditorium in Hill Hall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“Tres Vidas” is a chamber music theatre performance featuring a singing actress and a trio composed of a cello, piano and percussion. The performance is based on the lives of three legendary Latin American women: Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, Salvadoran human rights activist Rufina Amaya and Argentinean poet Alfonsina Storni.

The show features a wide stylistic range of music, including popular and folk songs from Mexico, El Salvador and Argentina. The performance will also include vocal and instrumental tangos by Carlos Gardel and Astor Piazolla, as well as new music written specifically for the Core Ensemble by Osvaldo Golijov, Orlando Garcia, Pablo Ortiz and Manuel DeMurga.

“The Core Ensemble’s representation of the lives of Frida Kahlo, Rufina Amaya and Alfonsina Storni serves to offer insights into the varieties of Latin American realities, through the visual arts, the struggle for social justice, and poetry — and the influences of the women who contributed to shaping those realities. The Institute for the Study of the Americas is excited to collaborate with units across campus to bring “Tres Vidas” to Carolina and broaden the Institute’s reach through the arts,” stated Louis A. Pérez, Jr., J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History and director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at UNC-Chapel Hill.

The writer of “Tres Vidas,” Marjorie Agosin, has been one of the leading voices of Latin American feminism, honoring Latina women since the mid-1980s. As the author of nearly 20 books — including poetry, fiction and literary criticism — Agosin has won several distinguished prizes for her work. Raised in Chile, Agosin moved to the United States in her mid-teens and attended the University of Georgia for her undergraduate degree. She then received her doctorate in literature from Indiana University Bloomington. Agosin was most recently named a fellow to the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University.

Since 1993, the Core Ensemble has toured nationally to every region of the United States and internationally to England, Russia, the Ukraine, Australia and the British Virgin Islands.

The Institute for the Study of the Americas coordinated the Core Ensemble’s visit to UNC-Chapel Hill with support from the College of Arts and Sciences and Carolina Latinx Center, Carolina Public Humanities, Center for Global Initiatives, Curriculum in Global Studies, Department of Anthropology, Department of Art and Art History, Department of Dramatic Art, Department of History, Department of Music, Department of Political Science, Department of Romance Studies, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, Institute for the Arts and Humanities, UNC Latina/o Studies Program and UNC Global.

This event is free and open to the public.

Event Contact: Beatriz Riefkohl Muñiz, associate director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas, riefkohl@email.unc.edu.

Media Contact: Katie Bowler Young, director of global relations, kby@unc.edu

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