In its Twin City debut, Orland Park-based dance company Ballet 5:8 shines a light on postpartum depression with La Llorona. The full-length ballet based on a Mexican folktale of the same name kicks of Hispanic Heritage Month this weekend at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts.
For founding artistic director Julianna Rubio Slager, the ballet is a way to bring visibility to untold stories and misunderstood characters.
In setting a ballet on the story, Slager shifts the narrative about the ghost of a woman, Maria, who wanders creeks and riverbeds wailing for the children she drowned.
"There's a lot of those stories you grow up with," she said. "I don't think I started with the mindset of using this to show how mental health can be such a struggle for women with postpartum depression. But as I grew older I started to realize how many women struggle with feelings of sadness and loss, and just a change of identity once they become a mom."
La Llorona the ballet, which first premiered in 2024, is set in the post Mexican American War era of Santa Fe. In Slager’s version, Maria is a young mom grappling with mental illness and the identity shift inherent with motherhood.
In one scene, Maria hallucinates she’s drowned her children—only to realize they’re shivering cold in the bathtub, said Slager.
“I think there is a lot of scorn on mothers who cannot do it all," she said, "and very little understanding or help for mothers who are in these desperate spirals and in the throes of difficulty with mental health."
It's not the first time Slager has waded into women's issues. She previously created ballets centered on themes like sex trafficking and missing and murdered women in the borderlands between El Paso, Texas, and Juárez, Mexico.
"A lot of the stories I tell come from parts of my heritage I feel like are not well represented in the media," Slager said. "I had a tia who was a victim of the murders in Juárez, so that is extremely important to me—and I feel there should be a lot more representation and understanding of some of these issues."
Breaking stereotypes
Dispelling pervasive Marianism in Latino culture is one of the reasons La Llorona unpacks motherhood in a cultural context.
Slager said she wants the public to see the true version of being a Hispanic woman, to raise awareness of the importance of their wellbeing while releasing the expectation that they should shoulder the emotional and psychological burden of creating families and communities.
“I think there's a gap where we see Latinas as either these perfect kind of Maria mother figures, or we see them as kind of these sexy, spicy Latinas,“ a stereotype often driven by culture and media in America, said Slager. “And so my goal is really to humanize Latinas for what they are, which is beautiful and imperfect, powerful, yes, sexual—but that is not what we are, and that's not what we lead with.”
As a third-generation Mexican American, Slager said it was vital for her to humanize the Latino experience. She drew from personal experience and didn’t shy away from addressing the Chicano dilemma — too Mexican for Americans but not Mexican enough for Mexicans. To accomplish this, she fused the physical and metaphorical elements of blended cultures, and through dance, incorporated Mexican rhythms like Huapango and Huasteca, working them into ballet sequences.
Transporting audiences
Slager hopes Twin Cities audience members are awed by the watercolors and De Vargas-style house integrated in La Llorona's sets. All are inspired by old Santa Fe. The backdrop is Albuquerque’s Sandia Mountains, named for their watermelon hues at sunset and a nod to Slager's family's roots straddling the U.S.-Mexico border.
“We've incorporated the sunsets that are so breathtaking in New Mexico," she said. "For me, that's home."
Slager said she wants the audience to get a sense of the dynamic stories through the geographical location and the color palettes of teals and oranges of New Mexico.
For the music, Slager opted for Lhasa de Sela's version of La Llorona, made famous by Mexican singer Chavela Vargas. De Sela is an American Mexican-Canadian singer-songwriter who has lived in Canada, Mexico and the United States.
Slager said Vargas' voice is imbued with power and lingering loss—a perfect complement to La Llorona's themes.
“I have been so drawn to her story as a woman, as a mother, as a woman who lived in between worlds," she said.
Ballet 5:8's La Llorona takes place Sunday, Sept. 21, at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts, 600 N. East St., Bloomington. Tickets are $17-$56 at 309-434-2777 and artsblooming.org.
